Historical Allusions in Dante's Inferno: Their Implications in Teaching History and Literature

This research focused on the historical allusions in Dantes Inferno. Specifically, it aimed to find out the historical allusions in the first book of the Divine Comedy, its images, and it symbols, identify how these historical allusions are used in Dantes Inferno; describe the categories of these historical allusions; analyze or interpret the historical allusions; and relate their implications in literature and history. It covered only the first canticle of the poem which is the Inferno. Excluded in the study were the last two books of the Divine Comedy- the Purgatorio and the Paradiso. This study was a qualitative research, particularly descriptive-analytical using textual analysis focusing on the historical allusions found in Dantes Inferno. Being a qualitative one, it did not employ statistical treatment of data but an in-depth and careful analytical description of the historical allusions in Dantes Inferno. The study was anchored on New Historicism which treats literature not as a reflection or product of a social reality but as one of several, sometimes antagonistic practices. Through this story, Dante is preaching the perfection of Gods justice. He shows that Hell exists to punish sin and the sinners suffer punishment to a degree befitting the gravity of their sin, as to correspond allegorically to that sins nature.