This is KZSU Stanford.

I'm Robert Harrison for entitled opinions, coming to you with the third episode of our mini-series on Dante's characters.

In the previous episode, I spoke about Dante's Ulysses as a character who was ahead of his time.

I suggested that in Inferno 26, the Divine Comedy takes a pre-leptic leap out of its own time

into the looming future of Renaissance Humanism, of early modern trans-oceanic exploration,

the age of scientific discovery, and much else besides.

This vortex of anachronism carries over

into the next canto in some remarkable ways.

Here in Inferno 27, we meet the shade of Guido da Montefeltro, who in my mind is the most complex

character in the entire poem.

Who was Guido da Montefeltro?

In real life, he was a brilliant Ghiboline General from a provincial region of Italy, Romania.

In the Inferno, Guido is punished in the same pouch of the eighth circle of hell and in the same manner as Ulysses.

In other words, Guido too was a fraudulent counselor, and his soul wanders around

enveloped in a flame from within which he speaks. This in itself is bizarre, for nowhere else

in the inferno do we find two major characters punished for the same sin, both of whom offer extended monologues.

There are some dramatic differences between those monologues, historical, stylistic, and

psychological differences, which I would like to reflect on in this episode. So, let's get started.

Referring to Ulysses in his tongue-like flame,

Inferno 27 begins,

Jaya was dritta in su la fiamma and quiet per not dire pia, and ja da no, senjia, with the licenza the dolce poet already the flame was erect and quiet no longer speaking and already it had left us with the permission of my sweet poet when another coming after it made us turn our eyes to its peak because of a confused sound coming out of it.

As the Sicilian bull, which first bellowed with the cries of him who had tempered it with his file, used to bellow with the voice of the afflicted one, so that, though made of brass, still it seemed transfixed with pain, so not having any

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