ENGL 157
Reading the 'Inferno' Fall 2019
Division I Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

This is an expository writing course, but also a journey through hell—more precisely, through Dante’s Inferno. Over the course of the semester, as we wind our way through the underworld, we will consider the circumstances of the damned, their guilt, their punishments, and the overall aims of Dante’s extraordinary vision. How and why are the condemned sentenced to an eternal afterlife in this underground kingdom of cruelty? What are we to make of the poem’s humor and malevolence, and how are we to understand its vast architecture? In writing about the fate of these sins and sinners we will focus on techniques to improve your critical reasoning and analytical skills with the goal of writing interesting and well-argued essays. Students will receive from the instructor timely comments on their writing skills, with suggestions for improvement.