An Interpolated Episode: A Look Back At The First Four Cantos of INFERNO

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I look back over the first four cantos of INFERNO with an overview of where we've been and a discussion of the structure of the poem, COMEDY.

I'll talk about some of the architectural details of the work, the ways that the reading of COMEDY may be more complex than you might imagine, and the reasons Limbo is so strange in Dante's masterwork.

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Here are the segments for this episode:

[01:05] A plot summary of the first four cantos of INFERNO.

[05:17] The architecture of those first four cantos, mostly about antinomies (or oppositions).

[09:17] A look back the at the (uneasy?) relationship between allegory and realism (for lack of better words) in the first four cantos.

[15:19] Four reasons why COMEDY supports so many disparate, even contradictory interpretations.

[21:01] Our poet, Dante, constantly moves the fence of his understanding. Why? Because of Beatrice. Because of love. Love always moves the fence.