We are now deep in Hell. Two of the sinners we encounter in canto 29 introduce a new wrinkle to the poem’s psychology. They seem to have some degree of self-knowledge about the justice of their punishment, or at least they refer to their own punishment as fitting. What does it mean to have self-knowledge post-damnation? It can’t be that sinner’s learn once condemned to Hell, can it? Is total self-knowledge equivalent to a complete severing from God’s being? Why is forgery a sin punished so deep in the pit? And why is it’s contrapasso that the forger is made too heavy to move, and tormented by images of lovely, flowing rivers?

We also discuss the meaning of being entertained by the grotesque scenes of torture and demonic slapstick throughout the Inferno. Is the only purpose of these scenes to deliver moral lessons, and could you deliver the lessons without the moral dangers posed by the base entertainments? How does Dante respond to the artistic and rhetorical challenges posed by the obvious fact that it is more fun to think and talk about Hell than about Heaven? Or is this merely a problem for us decadents moderns, and not one for Dante and his contemporary readers who, presumably, had no lack of faith in the very real existence of the afterlife and its fiery punishments?