INFERNO, Episode 73. Further Questions About Inferno, Canto XIII

Over the course of our episodes through Inferno’s Canto XIII, I’ve had some great interactions with people via email, via DMs, via Twitter conversations, and through my website.

Three of these questions seems big enough that I thought I’d share them in this interpolated episode before we move on to Canto XIV.

The first is a request for clarification on my reading of Dante’s line “I believe that he believed that I would believe.” How does this relate to literary interpretation?

The second is a bit of a challenge to me about my reading of the poem—and how that reading may well be too modern. Along the way, this listener offered his alternate theory of the poem’s progression, one that may help me not yell quite so much about shades’ breathing hard or being torn limb from limb.

And a final question has to do with the process by which I translate Dante’s text.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I pause on our slow-walk through Dante’s COMEDY to answer three listener questions.