A review by smitchy
Circles of Hell by Dante Alighieri

3.0

What struck me most about this extract of Dante's Inferno is how very medieval the descriptions were. I know it was written in that time but it is a story that could only have been taken seriously in a society that was so very overshadowed by religion. Even the supposed "sins" the victims in hell had committed shows how much of a strangle hold the church had on thinking. Basically anything that would be pleasurable would send you to hell. I wonder how many ill-educated people over the centuries read or heard of this story and lived in fear that it was true?