The opening section of the poem, Inferno, finds Dante lost in sin, symbolically depicted as a dark wood. Each cantica is made up of thirty-three cantos, once again giving significance to the number “three.” The poem has an introduction, which is considered part of the first cantica, thus giving the work a total of one hundred cantos. The three aforementioned sections in literary terms are known as canticas and total 14,233 lines. Given its religious significance, it is not surprising that The Divine Comedy is structured as a trinity. Beatrice, who represents Dante’s ideal woman, leads passage through Heaven.

The Roman poet Virgil is Pilgrim’s guide through Hell and Purgatory. Pilgrim’s journey through the realms of the dead lasts from the eve of Good Friday to the Wednesday following Easter in the year 1300. Comedy, considered a base genre, flowed in the opposite direction with tragedy, or at least unhappiness, reaching a happy or optimistic culmination. Traditional tragedies had plotlines that began with an optimistic, or positive, event but ended in sadness, death, or a downtrodden existence. Rather, the poem is a “comedy” in that it is of the classical style that existed in partnership with tragedy.

The title, The Divine Comedy, is not an implication that the poem is humorous in nature. It is a spiritual journey expounding the evils of sin through the first-person narration of the aptly named main character, Dante the Pilgrim. In this three-part epic poem, Dante Alighieri takes his readers on a pilgrimage to Heaven via journeys first through Hell and Purgatory.

Sparknotes dante inferno