Brown also expands upon Dante’s loss of order created by individuals who have
“gone astray” to the requisite loss of order created by modern social organizations.
Dante’s journey reflects a “sense of divine order in a world seemingly bereft of symbolic
retribution, purgation, or reward . . . ” (Phillips 202). Sin must be accompanied by
counterpoise, the appropriate punishment to balance (offset) its effect. Thus, society’s
sin of overpopulation must be counterbalanced by scientific advances to reduce the
birthrate, just as the Plague did so naturally in the 13th and 14th centuries. In Brown’s
Inferno, the focus is on the sins of the social order and not on Dante’s version of
personal and individual sin.
Dante’s Influence. As a framework for understanding the initial—and ongoing—
popularity of Dante’s work, we need to begin with a brief overview of his life’s
experiences—many of which contributed to his popularity and that of his work. Living in
Florence, one of the most vibrant, influential, and political of the city states of the Middle
Ages, Dante experienced the classic, romantic, and obsessive “love at first sight” of
Beatrice Portinari when he was only 9 years old. Although it has been widely reported
that Dante never even spoke to Beatrice, she became his life-long muse and
inspiration—the epitome of divine love in his Inferno, taking a prominent role in the
poem as she called for Virgil to guide Dante through the final descent into the nine
circles of hell. (It is not until the third part of the poem, The Paradiso, that Beatrice
becomes Dante’s guide.) Second, the Divine Comedy, of which The Inferno is the first
poem, is the first work written in Tuscan or rustic Italian—in contrast to Latin which was,
of course, used for all scholarly and literary works. The use of the popular, vernacular
language was the means to reach the people, \