ABSTRACT
This chapter is a model of an introduction in conveying so much and handling so many problems tactfully in a short space, and it becomes a discussion of Virgil’s importance. As expounded, drily and lucidly, by Virgil in canto XI it all centres on one term, malizia, understood as a force aimed against one or other aspect of total reality – one’s own self, or other men, or the order of nature, or God. As mankind is one race in virtue of the common gift of reason, so it should, Dante thought, form one political community obeying one ruler who would represent both God who creates reason and man who receives it. A strong social emphasis marks the Inferno; and, since the poet was deeply involved in politics and his world was that of the medieval Commune, the more or less self-governing city-state, a strong political emphasis too.
