We can better appreciate the density and complexity of Dante's symbolism by looking at a single example. Our common image of Satan is that of a sly tempter (in popular art he is often in formal dress whispering blandishments in a willing ear with just a whiff of sulphur about him) after the manner of Milton's proud, perversely tragic, heroic Satan in Paradise Lost. For Dante, Satan is a huge, stupid beast, frozen in a lake of ice in the pit of hell. He beats six batlike wings (a demonic leftover from his angelic existence; ...
Beyond that, the whole complex of Satan is heavily weight with symbolic significance. Satan lies in frozen darkness at a point in the universe farthest fom the warmth and light of God. He is the fallen angel of light (Lucifer means "light-bearer"), now encased in a pit in the center of the earth excavated by the force of his own fall from heaven. Satan is immobile, compared to God, who is the mover of all things in the universe. He is totally inarticulate and stupid because he represents, par excellence, all of the souls of hell who have lost what Dante calls "the good of intellect." Satan, and all the souls in hell, will remain totally unfulfilled as created rational beings because they are cut off from the final source of rational understanding and fulfillment: God. Intellectual estrangment from God is for Dante, as it was for Thomas Aquinas, the essence of damnation. This estrangment is most evident in the case of Satan, who symbolizes in his very being the loss of rationality and all that derives from that fact.
i loved reading dante's divine comedy
i loved paradise lost
i love theology
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THIS TEXTBOOK NEEDS TO COME ALIVE AND BE MY BEST FRIEND KIND OF LIKE HARRY POTTER, EXCEPT NOT, BECAUSE I THINK THE BOOK WAS VOLDEMORT AND THEN HE TRIED TO KILL HARRY. OR SUMMON SOME GIGANTIC SNAKE WHICH WOULD HAVE INEVITABLY PROLIFERATED THE CIRCUMSTANCES, SCHISMS, HEIGHTENED STRATIFICATIONS, AND UNSTABLE SOCIOPOLITICAL CONDITIONS NEEDED IN A HYPOTHETICAL WIZARDING EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION TO KILL HIM.