Aristotle was the only pagan philosopher really considered permissible by the church. This will come up in the next couple of cantos.
Aristotle spoke about rhetoric and the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos in building an argument.
Ethos has to do with ethics or our society's general moral beliefs. Love your country. Do good deeds. Do no harm to others, etc. Mom and apple pie and baseball.
Logos appeals to our logical brains. You build your argument based upon precepts made up of facts.
Pathos is an appeal to emotion. I want you to see how often Dante uses Pathos in order to get a sinner to tell him something or to get us to feel sorry for the sinner. Politicians and pastors love pathos.
Usury is another concept that will come up in the next couple of cantos. Today, usury means lending money at exorbitant interest rates. The word has been used often in referring to the payday-lending industry and recent legislation.
In the Middle Ages, usury meant lending money at any interest rate. One was supposed to make one's living off of one's talents--talents like painting, shoe-making, building, copying manuscripts, etc. You were not supposed to make money from money. Part of this is a sign of Medieval anti-semitism. You will see that in the canto.
Canto X--the Heretics
Who is Farinata degli Uberti? How does Dante know him?
How do these two treat each other?
Who is Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti? How does Dante know him? What does Dante say to upset Cavalcanti? How does he "fix" this later?
Note the many-leveled symbolism of this encounter, especially as it pertains to a rival poet.
Note all the gyre-imagery (pertains to Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming"). It is even in the dialog: "'Supreme Virtue, who through the impious land/ wheel me at will down these dark gyres,' I said, / speak to me, for I wish to understand'" (4-6).
Note the reference to Epicurus and his followers--it's in the footnotes.
Note how Dante flatters the sinner in this realm: "'O Tuscan, who go on living through this lace/ speaking so decorously, may it please you pause/ a moment on your way, for by the grace/ of that high speech in which I hear your birth,/ I know you for a son of that noble city/ which perhaps I vexed too much in my time on earth'" (23-27).
Note the physical movement and the tone of admiration: "My eyes were fixed on him already. Erect, / he rose above the flame, great chest, great brow;/ he seemed to hold all Hell in disrespect" (34-36).
Virgil admonishes Dante to "'mind how you speak to him'" (39).
Note the following description and the use of pathos: "At this another shade rose gradually, / visible to the chin. It had raised itself,/ I think, upon its knees, and it looked around me / as if it expected to find through the black air / that blew around me, another traveler. / And weeping when it found no one there, turned back" (52-57).
Note Farinata's connection to the earth still--he blames his plight, in part, on "'edicts pronounced against my strain'" (84).
Farinata regrets the destruction of Florence, something he would not have done.
Know that sinners lack the knowledge of the present! "'We see asquint, like those whose twisted sight / can make out only the far-off,' he said, 'for the King of All still grants us that much light'" (100-102).
"'Except what others bring us / we have no news of those who are alive'" (104-105).
He mentions some sinners, but "'of the rest let us be dumb'" (120).
Great description:
"So saying, he bore left, turning his back / on the flaming walls, and we passed deeper yet / into the city of pain, along a track / which plunged down like a scar into a sink/ which sickened us already with its stink" (134-137).
Note how the above passage foreshadows or transitions into the next canto!
Canto XI--The Heretics
The footnotes talk about the harrowing of Hell. Note that.
Pope Anastasius (496-498)--the Great Schism
Lower Hell is based upon Aristotle's The Ethics and The Physics. It ends two ours before Holy Saturday.
Note the transition at the opening of the canto: "We came to the edge of an enormous sink / rimmed by a circle of great broken boulders" (1-2).
Know Plotinus (see footnotes).
Malice differs from sins of incontinence because it has to do with intent. Earlier, we had the sins of incontinence. They have more to do with our animal appetites.
Virgil: "'Malice is the sin most hated by God. / And the aim of malice is to injure others / whether by fraud or violence. But since fraud / is the vice of which man alone is capable / God loathes it most. Therefore, the fraudulent / are placed below, and their torment is more painful'" (22-27).
Violence "'sins in three persons, so is that circle formed / of three descending rounds of cruel torments. / Against God, self, and neighbor is violence shown'" (29-31).
"A man may lay violent hands upon his own / persons and substance; so in that second round / eternally in vain repentance moan/ the suicides and all who gamble away / and waste the good substance of their lives / and weep in that sweet time when they should be gay" (40-45).
Unlike the medieval man, the renaissance man was supposed to love the world as part of God's creation. We are seeing some of that represented in the above passage.
"Violence may be offered the deity/ in the heart that blasphemes and refuses Him / and scorns the gifts of Nature, her beauty and her bounty" (46-48).
Note the descriptive nature of Dante's question to Virgil: "'But tell me: those who lie in the swamp's bowels, /those the wind blows about, those the rain beats, / and those who meet and clash with such mad howls--/ why are they not punished in the rust-red city / if God's wrath be upon them? And if it is not, / why must they grieve through all eternity?'" (70-75).
Here, Virgil rebukes him for not knowing the answer through reason--particularly, through Aristotle's Ethics. This was the only pagan philosopher permitted and his structures helped to shape the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church.
Usury is mentioned. Dante asks why it is so bad and Virgil explains: "'Philosophy makes it plain by many reasons,' he answered me, 'to those who heed her teachings, / how all of Nature, --her laws, her fruits, her seasons,--springs from the Ultimate Intellect and its art: / and if you read your Physics with due care, / you will note, not many pages from the start , /that Art strives after her by imitation, / as the disciple imitates the master; / Art, as it were, the Grandchild of Creation./ By this, recalling the Old Testament / near the beginning of Genesis, you will see / that in the will of Providence, which was meant/ to labor and to prosper. But usurers, by seeking their increase in others ways, / scorn Nature in herself and her followers'" (97-111).
Note the transitional nature of the last line of the canto:
"'But come, for it is my wish now to go on:/ the wheel turns and the Wain lies over Caurus, the Fish are quivering low on the horizon, / and there beyond us runs the road we go/ down the dark scarp into the depths below'" (112-116).
Canto XII--Circle Seven: Round One--the Violent Against Neighbors
Dante and Virgil have to evade which mythological creature?
Below is the River of Blood-described in the previous canto: "As they wallowed in blood during their lives, so they are immersed in the boiling blood forever, each according to the degree of his guilt, while fierce Centaurs patrol the banks, ready to shoot with their arrows any sinner who raises himself out of the boiling blood beyond the limits permitted him" (1190).
Know which famous sinners can be found here.
Who is Chiron and what does he do for the pair? What is Chiron's relationship to Achilles?
Note the transitional nature of the first line as well as its descriptive nature, which includes several metaphors.
"The scene that opened from the edge of the pit/ was mountainous, and such a desolation/ that every eye would shun the sight of it: / a ruin like the Slides of Mark near Trent/ on the bank of the Adige, the result of an earthquake/ or of some massive fault in the escarpment--/ for, from the point on the peak where the mountain split/ to the plain below, the rock is so badly shattered / a man on the top might make a rough stair of it" (1-9).
Pay attention to the footnotes about the wicked queen and the Minotaur. Know the story.
Know Nesus' story too, also in the footnotes.
Note the descriptive nature of the following passage: "We drew near those swift beasts. In a thoughtful pause / Chiron drew an arrow, and with its notch / he pushed his great beard back along his jaws. / And when he had thus uncovered the huge pouches/ of his lips, he said to his fellows: 'Have you noticed how the one who walks behind moves what he touches? That is not how the dead go'" (76-82).
