To Hell and Back: Dante’s Archetypal Journey
Madison U. Sowell, Literature

The epic hero in classical literature, such as Odysseus and Aeneas, engaged spirits and demons in the underworld as a necessary rite of passage before he could rise to confer a boon to humankind. These otherworldly engagements, coupled with biblical allusions to Christ’s visit to the spirit prison (1 Peter 3:18-19) and St. Paul’s rapture (2 Cor. 12:1-3), provided the medieval poet Dante with the framework for a Christian journey to Hell. We shall detail Dante’s metamorphosis of classical tradition into Christian innovation and explore the moral lessons learned as Dante’s Pilgrim encounters fornicators, flatterers, and flatulent devils.