3 - Infernal Gluttony

Summary

Abstract

This chapter begins the exploration of gluttony in the Comedy with a focus on the first canticle, Inferno. The barren wasteland to which the unrepentant are condemned is, like the individual contrapassi (just punishments) to which they are subjected, a perfect infernal imitation of the diseased community they created with their actions on earth. In Hell, Dante's gluttons demonstrate how the relationship with food can either aid or undermine the recreation of the city of God in the city of man. Engaging directly with the debate over the essential nature of humanity and the threshold between body and soul, Dante portrays the infernal glutton with the eroded identity and loss of reason that are the inevitable results of indiscriminate consumption, results that prompt an indigestion that will poison not just this generation but also the next.

Keywords: cannibalism, communion, essence, progeny, reason, will

The Convivio is a failed experiment in at least one respect: the poet's abandonment of its composition cannot but lend credence to the suggestion that it was incapable of acting as a grain store for the new community Dante had envisioned. This rustic bread of mixed grains exposes a great deal about the server and the served, however, and it remains an important point of reference even as the philosopher becomes the poet of the Comedy. Regaining his footing after the unfinished Convivio, the pilgrim begins the journey toward the head of a new table, passing first through a landscape of lack that represents the realization of the unprovisioned city. The barren wasteland to which the unrepentant are condemned is, like the individual contrapassi to which they are subjected, a perfect infernal imitation of the diseased community they created with their actions on earth. As the poem begins to weave political philosophy with spiritual understanding, Dante's gluttons will demonstrate how consumption practices structure individual and group identities alike, and either aid or undermine the recreation of the city of God in the city of man.

The souls Dante encounters in Inferno 6 are the first group the poet explicitly defines as gluttons, yet the message to be distilled from his exchange with them is far from transparent, and the context in which their exchange takes place only provokes further questions.