INFERNO, Episode 177. You Can Solve Your Family's Vendetta Even In Hell: Inferno, Canto XXIX, Lines 1 - 36

Dante and Virgil stick around the ninth of the evil pouches (the “malebologe”) of fraud in INFERNO to find the first of Dante’s family in the afterlife: Geri del Bello, Dante’s father’s first cousin. They may also come to a tentative truce or even resolution for the vendetta thematics that have run under INFERNO all along.

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INFERNO, Episode 176. Bertran de Born, The Rationale For Inferno, & The Dangers Of Poetry: Inferno, Canto XXVIII, Lines 112 - 142

Canto XXVIII and the evil pouch (or “malebolge”) of the schismatic fraudsters ends with a poet: Bertran de Born, who wrote the very troubadour poetry that was a forerunner of Dante’s early work. And the canto ends with a rationale for the punishments: “contrapasso.” But what punishments? Bertran’s? The schismatics” All of the damned? Or even more?

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INFERNO, Episode 174. Of The Roman Civil War, Idealism, And Its Child, Ambivalence: Inferno, Canto XXVIII, Lines 91 - 102

In the ninth of the evil pouches (the “malebolge”) of fraud, among all the other schismatics and scandalmongers, we meet Curio, who goaded Julius to cross the Rubicon and start the civil war that destroyed the Republic and founded the Empire. And we also see a node of Dante the poet’s inevitably ambivalence, a product of his idealism.

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INFERNO, Episode 173. The Wonder Of Historical Obscurity: Inferno, Canto XXVIII, Lines 64 - 90

Muhammad has walked on but we’re not nearly done with the schismatics. Here comes a guy who’s so into talking, he pulls open his windpipe to get the job done. Problem is, much of what he tells Dante the pilgrim has been lost to us in the mists of history. Maybe that’s not a cause for worry. Maybe it’s a call to wonder.

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INFERNO, Episode 171. Dante, Muhammad, The Comedy, and Islam: Inferno, Canto XXVIII, Lines 22 - 45

We come to one of the most shocking, vulgar, and incendiary passages in all of INFERNO: Muhammad’s placement in the ninth of the evil pouches (the malebolge) that make up the circle of fraud. Why is Muhammad here? What’s the history of the West’s relationship with Islam? Why is Dante explicitly using an Arabic word in this passage?

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