11. The Ultimate Evil
In this lecture, our discussion of the Inferno is brought to a close. We look at the ninth circle of hell, that of complex fraud (fraud against those to whom special trust is owed) by examining the story of Ugolino and Ruggieri, told in Cantos 32 and 33. Dantes way of examining terminal evil is through images of cannibalism, which begin with the image of Ugolino gnawing on the head of his archrival, Ruggieri, and continue in the stark and savage tale told by Ugolino. In this tale, many of the key themes of the Inferno are brought together, including once again, the GuelfGhibelline struggle. At the end of the Inferno, we see Satan himself, gnawing on the figures of the three traitors Judas, Cassius, and Brutus. In Satan, we see a monstrous parody of the Christian Trinity and, in the punishment of these traitors, we see a continuation of the idea of cannibalism as the ultimate statement of the nature of evil.
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