Anger: Dante and Virgil are threatened by the Furies when they try to enter through the walls of Dis (Satan).This is the first time they pass through a circle without speaking to anyone, a commentary on Dante’s opinion of greed as a higher sin. Dante encounters more ordinary people but also the guardian of the circle, Pluto, the mythological king of the Underworld. This circle is reserved for people who hoarded or squandered their money, but Dante and Virgil do not directly interact with any of its inhabitants. The author Boccaccio took one of these characters, Ciacco, and incorporated him into his 14th-century collection of tales called "The Decameron." Gluttony: Where those who overindulge exist. Dante encounters ordinary people here, not characters from epic poems or gods from mythology.Lust: Self-explanatory. Dante encounters Achilles, Paris, Tristan, Cleopatra, and Dido, among others.Dante encounters Ovid, Homer, Socrates, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, and more here. Limbo: Where those who never knew Christ exist.Psychological Analysis of Dante’s Inferno. Retrieved March 30, 2017, from Deviant Art: Uncovering Dante’s Mind: Finding Psychological Structure in Dante’s Inferno. Retrieved March 31, 2017, from Simply Psychology: Retrieved March 30, 2017, from Purdue Online Writing Lab: Inferno did not only detail Dante’s undertakings in Hell, but the pending evolution of his unconscious to consciousness.īrizee, A., Tompkins, J., Chernouski, L., & Boyle, E. Dante’s humanity and Virgil’s inhumanity clashed to fabricate a psychological and spiritual quest of life that one must triumph over. It is the basic dilemma of all human existence that each element of the psychic apparatus, the id, ego, and superego, makes demands upon us that are incompatible with the other two leading to an inevitable inner conflict. Therefore, Virgil who stands as human reasoning of Dante in the text, as the guide constantly making judgment calls for Dante, is the superego providing Dante moral lessons throughout the journey.ĭante’s journey into the underworld is a symbolism of a spiritual enlightenment and a psychological awakening of his character. Dante ended up in hell due to his previous mistakes in life. Furthermore, the superego develops during early childhood and operates on the morality principle to behave in a socially responsible and acceptable manner. Virgil represents the ego, helping Dante see the realistic path to satisfy his desire to get away from pain and fear. In contrast to the id, the ego follows the reality principle as it operates in both the conscious and the unconscious. The ego, on the other hand, develops from the id during infancy which aims to satisfy the demands of the id in a socially acceptable way. The id for Dante in his journey is his impulsiveness to run away from trouble or bad times. The id, the location of the drives, operates at an unconscious level according to the pleasure principle which strives to satisfy basic drives to survive. As reflected in Dante’s Inferno, it was Dante’s unconscious desires which ruled over his entire journey to hell.įreud later developed a structural model of the mind comprising the id, ego, and superego, which were all present in Inferno. Freud introduced the notion of the unconscious as the drive which governs behavior to the greatest degree. Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, developed a topographical model of the mind wherein he used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind: the conscious, the area of the thoughts on the focus of attention preconscious, consisting thoughts retrieved from memory and the unconscious, the more basic, primal area whose functions are unknown to the conscious. Furthermore, Dante’s wander to hell signifies the evolution of his unconscious mind to nirvana, a psychological enlightenment of his soul not only as a Catholic but as a character grounded on Freudian theories of psychology. It is the Inferno which details Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hell, describing the recognition and rejection of sin. Widely hailed as one of the greatest classics of Western literature, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, as an allegory, represents the journey of the soul towards God which is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. On his voyage through the nine circles of hell, it was seventh heaven that he found in return.
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