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Comparing Dante Alighieri's Inferno And The Faerie Queene

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Both Dante Alighieri 's Inferno and Edmund Spenser 's The Faerie Queene depict wooded forests wrought with transformed men as trees. In the Inferno and The Faerie Queene an existential conundrum of compromised identities leaves Pier della Vigne and Fraudubio sans human choice. Dehumanized and disfigured, the individuals that comprise the trees still retain human qualities like talking, breathing, and, even, bleeding under certain circumstances. Within each space, whether it is considered a definite locus amoenus or a locus horribilis, the most significant human attribute to which these trees cling is bleeding and thus they have a small handful of feelings and emotions still within each of them. Instead of their ripped branches symbolizing death and decay, the breaking of the branches within Inferno 13 and The Faerie Queene 1.2, give the trees life as if nothing has changed. While the bleeding infers a loss of identity in both, redeemable only for one of the two, it also lets their stories be told. Their stories, sad in nature, have redemptive qualities and move the two pilgrims that listen to their doleful tales. The Inferno illustrates the journey of Dante the pilgrim as he travels through the nine circles of Hell wherein each circle objectifies a specific sin like lust, gluttony, greed or violence; there the sinners endure eternal punishment. In the seventh circle, the circle of violence, Dante interacts with the suicides and profligates. Condemned to live eternally as

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