ABSTRACT

The Divine Comedy is a grandiose, wide-ranging poem in which Dante depicts his fictional wanderings through the three realms of the afterlife: Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso). His pilgrimage is framed by encounters with infants, both at the beginning and at the very end. The very first souls that Dante meets in Hell are the children in Limbo (Inferno 4). Similarly, the souls closest to God in the Celestial Rose of Paradise are infants (Paradiso 32). This chapter traces the configurations of children and childhood in these four episodes, which in many ways reflect and yet contradict one other. The children depicted by Dante are placed between conceptions of coercion and liberty, contempt and respect. The chapter also presents the new understanding of childhood that emerged in Italy within the walls of the late medieval city-states, a development that can enhance our understanding of Dante's configuration of children in the Divine Comedy.