Corruption In Dante's Inferno

Dante and Xia Junsu’s Hell

What does a piece of medieval poetry and a k-pop song have in common? Inferno by Dante is the first part to a three part epic poem known as the Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), about his journey through the nine circles of hell. Dante’s Inferno is not simply the story of a man’s journey through hell, although in a literal sense, paints a very vivid picture of hell might look like. Dante wrote the Divine Comedy partially as a commentary on the corruption of the Italian political scene. Whereas, “Flower” by Xia Junsu, a South Korean singer, is the title song to one of his albums. “Flower” is a representation of Junsu’s journey through hardships and struggle in the korean music industry, as indicated

Born in 1265 in Florence, Italy, Dante as a child came into a scene of political turmoil. Two groups known as the Guelphs and the Ghibellines dominated Florentine politics during Dante’s lifetime. The Guelphs supported the pope and the Ghibellines supported the Holy Roman Emperor (Hawkins 9). Dante came from a family of Guelphs and shared the beliefs of the Guelph party for most of his life. However, it seems that his disdain for the Ghibellines spread to the Guelphs, and then to a broader sense of the Italian political scene and the Church, the more he got involved and especially after his exile. However, it is important to remember that Dante was very supportive of the Catholic religion and the pope as long as he thought the pope was not being corrupted by wealth (Murphy 483). Dante was very supportive of the Church in most cases, but its corruption was greatly disappointing to him. It seems that religion and politics in Florence were very connected, therefore so were Dante’s political and religious

One of the most obvious ones can be found in the lines, “Are you already standing, / already standing, o Boniface?” (Inf. 19.52-53). In this scene, Pope Nicholas III, mistakenly identifies Dante as Boniface VIII. Through this, Dante not only criticizes Pope Nicholas III, but also attacks Pope Boniface VIII, who was still alive at the time, for his misconducts against the Church. Pope Boniface VIII is known have been one of the most controversial and corrupt popes in history, so understandably “to Dante he became the symbol of the grossest corruption and was the object of the poet’s unrelenting and ferocious scorn” (Horne 280). By placing a Pope, and implicitly suggesting to place another, among the simonists, Dante is condemning the Catholic Church for their manipulation, and “greed for wealth and power” (Horne