... Christian day, writes a guidebook for Hell and, in doing so, questions his own rocky past and his chances for Hell, for Heaven. Dante, a Christian poet living during a Christian age, sets out to write a poem about his fictionalized version of Hell. I believe Dante's initial intent, beyond poetic creativity, is to be an instructional wake-up call to the misbehaving Christians of his day. As ... his horrors unfold, Dante finds himself faced with his own standards of living. Dante wonders if he satisfies the ... , we took no care/To rest, but climbed Some of the beautiful things that Heave...

• Word Count: 839
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... by Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is an allegory telling of the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine circles of suffering located within the Earth. Allegorically, "Divine Comedy"  represents the journey of the soul ... towards God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin. The poem starts on Maundy Thursday in the year 1300. The narrator, Dante himself, is thirty-five years old, and thus "halfway along our life's path" (Nel ... the Roman poet Virgil, who claims to have been sent by Bea...

• Word Count: 817
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the cherubim, "a splendor of cherubic radiance- (Canto XI, line 39), which was the second order of angels and those acknowledged as the wisest. He is portrayed in military terms, referred to as "God's athlete- (Canto XII, line 56). There is an emphasis or importance placed on their complementary nature, and of the ... as "Bereft of her first spouse, despised, ignored,/ she waited eleven hundred years and more,/ living without a lover till he came,"" (Canto XI, lines 64-66). She had climbed the cross to be with Christ, as the poem tells, remaining loyal to him even to his death. St. Fran...

• Word Count: 1058
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School