For more information on the published version, visit Rivista di Studi Italiani/ Journal of Italian Studies Website. https://www.journalofitalianstudies.com/it/dantes-blind-prison-confinement-and-carcerality-in-the-inferno-2/

McMenamin, James F. Dante's 'Blind Prison': Confinement and Carcerality in the Inferno. Rivista di Studi Italiani/ Journal of Italian Studies XXXIX, no. 3 (2021): 295-322. https://www.journalofitalianstudies.com/it/dantes-blind-prison-confinement-and-carcerality-in-the-inferno-2/

James McMenamin is a professor of Italian at Dickinson College.

The meanings of certain metaphors effortlessly coalesce almost
symbiotically so that the tenor and vehicle of these figures are interchangeable:
Hell conjures up the carceral just as prison draws out the infernal. Today it has
become almost commonplace to describe the prison experience in infernal
terms due to its perceived intolerability. During the late Middle Ages, however,
when the first communal prisons in Italy were created and essential features of
the afterlife such as the existence of Purgatory were formalized by the Church
and assimilated by its followers, the understanding of prison as a place of
confinement took two very different turns: one that associated prison with the
eternal suffering of Hell and the other with the expiatory promise of Purgatory.
These two very contrary conceptions shed light not only on how late medieval
thinkers envisioned the afterlife, but also how they grasped the developing notion of incarceration. While verses detailing hellish suffering are plentiful in
Dante’s Purgatory, the poet unambiguously represents Hell as an eternal prison
which he carves out strikingly in Inferno 10 dedicated to the heretics where we
discover Farinata degli Uberti and Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti in one of the most
poignant cantos of the Inferno due to its complexity and dramatic dialogue,
moving seamlessly between the two condemned souls with whom the Pilgrim
discusses some of the most relevant political and religious themes in the poem Cavalcante, father of Dante’s “first friend” and fellow poet Guido
Cavalcanti, is the character who establishes the carceral metaphor by calling
Hell a “blind prison” (“cieco carcere”, ll. 58-59) which Cato (Purg. 1. 40-41)
and then Virgil (Purg. 22.100-103) reiterate in the Purgatorio. This may be
one of the most consequential metaphors associated with the poem because,
through this portrayal, Dante’s Hell becomes synonymous with prison which is
corroborated by the figure’s widespread employment in the commentary
tradition. Cavalcante’s depiction of Hell as a blind prison is especially noteworthy because it finds itself in one of the most prisonlike cantos of the
poem which has never been explored from this standpoint.
In this essay, I will focus on Dante and Virgil’s entrance into lower Hell
(the city of Dis) and particularly Circle 6 dedicated to the heretics with the
objective of exploring how the poet constructs and amplifies the metaphor of
Hell as a prison which echoes the widely read apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus
where Christ’s Descent into Hell is described as a liberation of pre-Christian
souls from Satan’s infernal prison-house. My reading of Dante’s poem aims to
enhance our understanding of Inferno 10 by revealing another layer of meaning
in this very complex canto through the notion of Hell as a place of eternal
confinement.