Sinners
Sinners who paid for political office
Barrators
Punished in Satan’s middle mouth
Judas
Turns people to stone
Medusa
The act of drawing a conclusion that is not stated
Inference
Liberty taken by an author to achieve a desired effect
Poetic License
Sinners who sold religious sacraments and artifacts in the Church
Simonists
Had disdain for the fallen angels in Dis
Double Jeopardy
Angel from Heaven (Michael)
Half man, half bull
Minotaur
The background information the reader has to know and/or understand
Exposition
A reference to a famous person or work outside the story
Allusion
Sinners who were sent to Antenora
Traitors to political party or homeland
Crucified on the ground for his role in Christ’s death
Ciaphas
Archers who send one of their group to carry Dante across a boiling river
Centaurs
Characters in the work who evolve, surprise, or change
Dynamic
There are 99 of these, plus a preface, in The Divine Comedy
Cantos
Sinners who were punished in burning tombs
Heretics
Asks Dante to remember his literary work, Thesaurus
Brunetto Latini
Flying monster with scorpion tail who carries Virgil and Dante to Circle 8
Geryon
A subtle, sometimes humorous, inconsistency which makes sense in context
Irony
Of the 3 main kinds of sin, the most severe
Using reason or intellect as a weapon
Sinners who simply had no hope
Virtuous heathens and unbaptized babies
Sinner in circle 5 that Dante is delighted to see punished
Filippo Argenti
Leader of the devils who torture souls in the 5th trench in circle 8
Double Jeopardy
Malacoda
A major division of a work made up of cantos
Canticle
The 3 types of violence
Against neighbor/others, against self, against God