Dante's Inferno

Inferno The Comedy was written during the period of Dante's exile from his native city of Florence; it was begun perhaps as early as 1307 and completed shortly before his death in 1321. The fictional setting of the narrative, however, is 1300, a year and a half before his exile was to begin, during the great Jubilee Year called by Pope Boniface VIII. In the fiction of Dante the exiled poet, the younger Dante is at the height …

…of the earth at the antipodes, where the gigantic Mt. Purgatory rises up out of the ocean. The descent into hell which had begun on Good Friday ends as Dante and Virgil emerge from hell at dawn on Easter Sunday morning. Dante's descent and ascent recapitulates those of Christ and of the Church's annual ecclesiastical calendar. Having completed his voyage to the heart of darkness, Dante is ready to begin his climb toward the light.