When reading The Inferno in high school, I remember being fascinated by the imagery and creativity of Dante’s writing, and how, even though the text is so ancient, it still has the ability to paint a picture in the reader’s mind. Mr. Youngs, my Honors English teacher senior year, showed us these famous engravings by Gustav Dore, which complement Dante’s work beautifully. These works of art are very detailed, and depict scenes, images, and characters directly from passages of Dante’s Inferno.
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| Dark Wood |
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| Dark Wood |
These are two different images of Dore’s Dark Wood, which we are introduced to in the opening pages of Dante’s poem.
Dore also depicts his version of the Lion and the She-Wolf. His illustrations of the hellish characters are crazy, and really help bring the text to life. I would post all of them, but I don’t want to give it away for those of you who are first time Inferno readers!
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| Lion |
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| She Wolf |
Here are some of my favorites:
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| Dante and Vergil Enter the Gates of Hell (my absolute favorite)  |
Hellish beast scare me but your pictures are cool. This is a bad mandatory comment considering how good your post is. Man even Randy could make a better comment than me today. Way to hint about being in honors English though, very sly. You're right though about imagery. It is a very strong, but undervalued concept in the story. Most people focus more about who's in what circle than about what is going on around the characters.
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