The people, factions, and feuds behind the Commedia — Florentine politics, papal power, and the figures Dante loved or damned.
Lucy Bamboo explores Canto X’s greatest marvel: a political enemy rendered with unmistakable admiration, rising from his tomb in Hell as if the place itself were beneath him. The Heretic in His Tomb Dante descends into the sixth circle of Hell—the circle of heresy—and encounters something unforgettable. Flaming open tombs stretch across a landscape of … Read more
One of the most heartbreaking moments in all of literature occurs in Dante’s Inferno, Canto XV. The poet encounters his beloved teacher, Brunetto Latini, walking eternally across burning sand beneath a rain of fire. What makes this scene unbearable is not the punishment itself, but Dante’s tenderness toward the damned. Dante addresses Brunetto with the … Read more
By Lucy Bamboo I first read Canto XXXIII of Dante’s Inferno on a winter afternoon. Three weeks later, I was still thinking about it—not in the academic way literature often haunts us, but in the way genuine horror does. Count Ugolino della Gherardesca gnawing the skull of Archbishop Ruggieri is the image that broke something … Read more
Dante Alighieri had a lot of enemies. But none burned hotter than Pope Boniface VIII. The pontiff ruled from 1294 to 1303—precisely when Dante’s life came apart. In 1302, Boniface backed the Black Guelphs, the political faction that exiled the poet from Florence. Dante never returned home. That wound never healed. But the personal betrayal … Read more
