Discors Concordia: Swamps as Borderlands in Dante’s Inferno

Abstract

Dante Alighieri invokes both classical and medieval conceptions of wetlands to characterize the swamps of Inferno as morally and physically liminal spaces. This paper examines the multivalent functions of swamps—paludi in the original Tuscan of the Divine Comedy—to understand collapsed distinctions between the opposing forms of physical matter of Hell’s landscape (dirt, water) and opposing forms of divine judgement (damnation, salvation). The swamps of Inferno slow down the narrative as Dante carefully navigates the peculiar marshy formations which divide various levels and circles of the underworld. The paludi of Inferno only become traversable—and comprehensible—when the poet leaves behind his human pity for a reinforced belief in the righteousness of God’s rulings. An ecocritical assessment of the status of swamps as borderlands, as well as an examination of the classical precedents to Dante’s treatment of swamps, build a framework for understanding the complexities of wetlands as both generative spaces and sites of decay and death in Inferno.