Analyze the setting that dante develops in canto iv. examine how 1) the choices he makes to describe the setting and 2) the characters he places in this setting affect the reader's understanding of the first circle of hell, limbo. be sure to use specific details from the text to support your ideas.

"The Divine Comedy". Dante Alighieri(1265-1321).

1) The action of the novel takes place in 1300, in the Forest of Darkness or Forest of Error, on Good Friday, and ends the following Thursday. The forest symbolizes the materialism of people living on Earth. At the top of a hill, Dante sees a light representing the hope of the resurrection of Christ. When he attempts to climb toward the light, a leopard, lion, and a wolf—which symbolize human iniquity—block his way.  

The spirit of poet Virgil comes in and rescues him. Virgil escorts him out of the Forest by another route. This alternate route leads first through Hell .

After the Forest of Darkness, Dante proceeds through Hell and Purgatory, to finally ascends into Heaven.  

2) The character of this setting -CANTO IV- which is the further side of Acheron, is represented by the poet Virgil who takes Dante into Limbo, the First Circle of Hell, where the spirits of the people who lived virtuously but without Christianity stayed .

The Limbo is a place on the edge of hell for the people who are not saved even though they did not sin.  The first circle of hell -Dante's Limbo- is the place where non-Christian adults and unbaptized infants stayed.  

there mad at that place

chapter i -- paris: september, 1792

a surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate.

during the greater part of the day the guillotine had been kept busy at its ghastly work: all that france had boasted of in the past centuries, of ancient names, and blue blood, had paid toll to her desire for liberty and for fraternity.

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