ABSTRACT
This chapter draws attention to the Ugolino episode, one of the most memorable of the Inferno. The souls of Inferno have no time to look forward to, and time becomes decreative, history means collapse. The Commedia, particularly in the Inferno, is a gallery of portraits and a roster of names. In the Inferno name and fame seem fragile indeed, and even pathetic, when measured by the spectral shadow of eternity. The stupendous individual figures of the Inferno are so overwhelming that the groups of individuals tend to be neglected. Roughly in the first half of the Inferno, the offer of keeping a man’s name alive is a means of procuring a life story. The house rules of Inferno insist that willy-nilly the agonists’ fortunes and defects must be revealed. Progeny, that other source of human continuity, encounters a defeat in the Inferno.
