Josue Rodriguez
Contrapasso and Research Essay
INFERNO
Dante Alighieri has lost his path and presently wanders dreadfully through the woodland. The sun sparkles down on a mountain over him, and as he attempts to climb up to it, he finds his way blocked by three beasts—a leopard, a lion, and a wolf. Startled and powerless, Dante returns to the soft and dark wood. There he experiences the phantom of Virgil, the extraordinary Roman artist who has come to direct Dante back to his way, to the top of the mountain. Virgil says that his path will take them through Hell, which they will inevitably reach Heaven, where Dante’s cherished Beatrice is standing by. He includes that it was Beatrice, alongside two other sacred ladies, who, seeing Dante lost within the wood, sent Virgil to direct him. Virgil leads Dante through the doors of Hell, stamped by the frequenting engraving “abandon all hope, you who enter here” In today’s society, food is talked about, photographed, painted, studied, and fantasized approximately in addition to being consumed. Being the foremost trivialized of the seven dangerous sins, the sin of Gluttony plays a massive role within the text and throughout Dante’s Inferno, yet isn’t limited to food only.
Robert S. Dombroski, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut and Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at the City University of New York, died of infectious endocarditis in Paris on May 10, 2002. However, Dombroski’s works still live on today, as he illustrates in his journal article titled “The Grain of Hell: A Note on Retribution in Inferno.” He depicts an analysis of how Gluttony has taken place in Dante’s Inferno and connects it to the real world by tying the nature of sin and the way Dante represents its retribution as a whole. Dombroski supports his implication by describing food affecting ones thinking, illustrating overeating as a malfunction of the brain. Having a main goal to make his readers aware of the harsh reality of what can be confirmed as sluggishness, which can result from Gluttony. He sets up a formal and profoundly explanatory tone with his gathering of people of racially-mixed advanced readers and critical mediators of American literature.
Within the mental progression down through Hell, Dante wakes up in the third circle of Hell, the process of Gluttons. Which incorporates sin performed in isolation. A glutton could be an individual with an uncontrolled craving who intentionally, in their possess singular, converted natural nourishments into a sort of god or an object of worship. Hence, the glutton’s punishment may be an inversion, and rather than eating the refined, fragile nourishments and wines of the world, they are constrained to eat rottenness and mud. Rather than sitting in their comfortable house savoring all the erotic great nourishment and great wine and a great environment, they lie within the foul rain. Cerberus guards Circle III, and as in mythology, he requires a concession for each of his three mouths. This time, the filthy mud of the circle suffices before he grants passage. With his steady starvation, Cerberus may be a fitting gatekeeper for the circle of Gluttons, who changed their lives into an endless feast and did nothing but eat and drink, for which they must presently lie like pigs within the soil.
Dombroski argues Dante views Gluttony as more complex than the usual understanding of sin as excessive eating and drinking by amplifying the types of gluttony effects on a person. Instead of eating the delicate, sensitive nourishments and wines of the world. Dombroski illustrates the glutton’s punishment as they’re constrained to eat rottenness and mud. Further support for the theory that Dombroski claims Dante views Gluttony as more complex is the representation he gives throughout the article. Dombroski states, “through me you enter into eternal pain…” the concept of bringing a divine force into the basic understanding of eating and drinking makes Dante open to the thought of Gluttony that’ll synthesize with the complexity of what’s people are capable of. Dombroski clarifies the complexity of Gluttony by connecting the divine force to a human, justifying it to be more than typical excessive eating and drinking.
Gluttony may be a vice that’s regularly both misjudged and misrepresented. When individuals attempt to picture a gluttonous person, the thought that usually comes to mind could be a terribly overweight individual. However, the commentary from Robert Dombroski illustrates, “This mode of chastisement not only expresses the sin’s physical effects but, more importantly, is symbolic of its moral significance. It would therefore follow that since the gluttons’ sin lay in perverting the function of food and thus rejecting their divinely ordained end, it is suitable to the nature of the vice as well as consonant with the poet’s exemplary aims that the true meaning of their perversion is expressed. For this reason, the punishment inflicted on the gluttons of Hell can in no way be considered generic.” Gluttony should do with pleasure and the desire for pleasure. Additionally, it is a regular lousy habit, a routine design, that gets worn into our character, as Dombroski illustrates. The issue with being avaricious isn’t the delights themselves or the obtaining of the pleasures, but how an individual brings those delights. If the craving for pleasure isn’t effectively controlled, this bad habit that includes unrestrained craving degrades us into searching for pleasure in everything we do.
Canto VI incorporates Dante’s first political mention, which takes the frame of an outburst from Ciacco. Dante and Virgil progress into the circle of the Gluttonous, who must lie on the ground as the sewage rains down upon them. One Avaricious sits up when he sees Virgil and Dante and asks if Dante recognizes him. When Dante answers “that he does not, the shade declares himself as Ciacco, saying he went through his natural life in Florence. At Dante’s request, he voices his expectations for Florence’s political future, which he expects will be filled with conflict. Dante, at that point, inquires about figures from Florence’s political past, naming people he accepts to have been well-intentioned. Ciacco answers that they dwell in a much more profound circle of Hell. Before lying back down, he inquires Dante to keep in mind his title/name when he returns to the world above.
To synthesize with the thesis of food being talked about, photographed, painted, studied, and fantasized approximately in addition to being consumed. Also being the foremost trivialized of the seven dangerous sins, the sin of Gluttony plays a massive role within the text and throughout Dante’s Inferno, yet isn’t limited to food only. The article advocates this as the nature of punishment is compared with the activity of greed on earth. Anyone who practices Gluttony on earth can never be conciliated, regardless of the sum of material belonging they possess. Dante Inferno asserts this by defining a glutton and what it means to be one. A glutton is egotistical, covetous, and continually needing more, as we see being taken place with Ciacco. Gluttonous individuals regularly live out lives of warmth, hoarding luxury, and transitory sentiments of bliss when they get their possessions. A visual depiction of canto six from an artist discussed in class supports this theory.
Furthermore, analyzing Gustave Dore’s rendition of Inferno using support from the University of Leeds. (Fig.1) This is an artwork that examples that focuses on color & line, space & composition, medium & support, and many other facets of the study of art. Unit B1- The Human Figure University of Leeds demonstrates that “the painting is not a picture of something, but we are invited to engage with the painting’s shapes, color, and lines in their own right.” As the viewer, we see two prominent figures, Dante and Virgil taking up the forefront space, grabbing the viewers’ attention to focus on the emotions and settings around them. Additionally, through its monochromatic use of color being black, gray, and white, Gustave Dore emphasizes the sinners, highlighting them while making the environment a much darker scene allowing for the viewer so question each individual and their positions.
To conclude, Dante views Gluttony as more complex than the usual understanding of sin as excessive eating and drinking. At slightest in circles 2-5 of Hell, Dante employs these sins as part of his organizational procedure. Whereas desire and intemperance were, for the role, considered the slightest notable of the seven sins and pride nearly continuously the most noticeably awful, the arrangement of these two was not steady. The article similar to the text advocates this as the nature of punishment is compared with the activity of greed on earth. Also being the foremost trivialized of the seven dangerous sins, the sin of Gluttony plays a massive role within the text and throughout Dante’s Inferno, yet isn’t limited to food only. Applying this to American society, we can visualize with what we know that American society is filled with individuals who are both shameless overeaters and shameless dieters, individuals who appreciate too much, and individuals who enjoy too little. The sin of gluttony is uncontrolled in how the culture simultaneously commends and glorifies nourishment. Gluttony is so abundant that it is barely recognized as a sin, but by gluttonous overeaters looking down upon dieters or by gluttonous dieters looking down upon overeaters. As we see in Dante, the joint fixation with nourishment and other products produces avaricious people and therefore is the most trivialized sin of American society.
Citations
Dombroski, Robert S. “The Grain of Hell: A Note on Retribution in Inferno VI.” Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, no. 88, 1970, pp. 103–08, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40166072. Accessed 20 Apr. 2022.
https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/analysing-paintings/doc/unit-a2-colour-line
Illustration
Fig. 1. Dore, Gustave, 1890, Engraving, Dante Alighieri’s Inferno from the Original by Dante Alighieri and Illustrated with the Designs of Gustave Doré (New York: Cassell Publishing Company, 1890).
