Writing Assignment

Writing Assignment on Dante’s Divine Comedy

--25 points

--12 point font, double-spaced, one full page, approx. 300 words

--Upload your Word Document to the Drop Box on the Assignments page titled:  Dante

After reading all of the assigned cantos, choose one from the Inferno selections describing the various levels and Dante’s experiences in hell.  In a descriptive, full page of grammatically correct, properly punctuated prose, write your own version of that level.  You should use the situation of the canto you choose as a basis for your own version, but you do not have to follow it rigidly.  Instead, use it as a springboard for your own vision of what that part of hell would be like.

Feel free to experiment with language and to give imaginative descriptions.  You might construct a hell that is made of cultural allusions to our own time.  For example, I sometimes think that hell may have high, unfinished ceilings with fluorescent lighting and rows and rows of merchandise. In this hell, I am forced to shop forever as punishment for my material gluttony while alive.  I must load my tiny, wobbly-wheeled cart with only auto parts and accessories.  Every time my cart is full, I must stand in a line that snakes its way around and around.  (As you can see, I’ve given this some thought.)

The point of this assignment is to enter into the poet’s world by translating into the stuff of your own, contemporary experience. If you can enter the poem through the portal of your imagination, your own vernacular, I believe it will help you to understand and enjoy it more fully.