Virgil in Dante's Inferno

VIRGIL'S INFLUENCE ON AND IN DANTE'S INFERNO Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy in 1265. In his life, he created two major books of poetry: Vita Nuova and The Comedy. The Comedy, which was later renamed The Divine Comedy, is an epic poem broken down into three books in each of which Dante recounts his travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The first book of The Comedy, Dante's Inferno, is an especially creative narrative. He …

…borrowing the dark, pale environment so precisely described by Virgil's Aeneid, Dante in one way shows his ability to combine classical themes into a Christian story line. Dante's in depth description of the layout of Hell shows his deep faith in representing the Christian ideas of the last judgement, such as justice. Dante desired to transform the most important elements in the Underworld of Vergil's classic work Aeneid into the Hell of the Christian afterlife.