Comparing Dante Alighieri's Inferno And The Canterbury Tales

Medieval literature encompases some of the earliest surviving works that have been written. The themes that these pieces dealt with carried down through the ages to modern works and has had a lasting impact on literature. From them we can gain insight into the lives of people during the middle ages and we find that they dealt with many of the same problems that we do. The three works that I studied are Beowulf by an unknown author, Inferno by Dante Alighieri, and The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Beowulf is an epic poem which is the oldest surviving piece of literature written in old english. Inferno, on the other hand, was written much later in the medieval period and is still famous today. Many religious people still believe in Dante’s illustration of hell or have been influenced by it. Finally, The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories which is one of the first that was meant to be read by common folk. This book offers a very wide range of characters that is remarkable for medieval literature. Across all of these books you will find that a verse style is present. In that way the books seem to resemble a spoken story. The motif of what one's duty is or protecting their honor is found in these books. These are often accompanied by …show more content…
This book is a long poem which covers Dante’s own travels through hell as he is guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. Along his way through the nine circles of hell Dante talks to many of the suffering spirits about what err they had done. The nine circles of hell progress from outermost to innermost in the order of limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence (which contains three sub-rings), malebolgia or fraud (which is divided into 10 bolgias), and treachery (which is divided into four sub-rings). In the end of the poem they confront Lucifer at the center, although they don’t end up talking to him, and make their way into