Answer five of the following questions. Answer each question in a well-organized paragraph discussing details from the poem.Pace yourselves so that you do not spend too much time on one question.
1. After Nicholas mistakes Dante for Boniface, Virgil tells Dante to say: "I am not he--not whom you think I am." What is the significance of this encounter and this command? [Note: see bonus question below.]
2. How does Dante's description of the transformation of thieves compare with Ovid's description of the metamorphosis of Cadmus? Refer to the handout I gave you.
3. In Ulysses' narrative of his final voyage, what details suggest the importance of his oration to his fellow sailors, as that oration guides Dante the pilgrim on his own voyage?
4. At the beginning of canto 27, Dante compares the anguished cries of sinners like Ulysses and Guido de Montefeltro to the cries of the man who constructed the Sicilian bull. What is the significance of that comparison?
5. What does Virgil's response to Mohammed in the canto of the sowers of schism show about Virgil as Dante's guide through Hell? [Virgil says: "I, who am dead, must guide him here below.../this is as true as that I speak to you."]
6. Given Virgil's rebuke levelled at Dante for staring at the inciters of violence, Bertran de Born and Geri de Bello, what is shown about his teaching technique in the following lines: "tell us if there are some Italians/among the sinners in this moat..."?
7. What does the following simile show about Dante the poet?
Even as one who dreams that he is harmed
and, dreaming, wishes that he were dreaming, thus
desiring that which is, as if it were not,
so I became within my speechlessness...
[Note: this simile occurs after Dante the pilgrim stares too long at Master Adam and Sinon, the counterfeiters of coins and words.]
8. In order to elicit Ugolino's horrid story, Dante promises: "I shall repay you yet on earth above/if that with which I speak does not dry up." What does Dante's promise show about his character at this point of the Commedia?
Bonus:
For an extra two points added onto your test score, what grammar error did the esteemed translator Allen Mandelbaum make in this sentence quoted in question one???