Divine Comedy in popular culture



The Divine Comedy has been a source of inspiration for artists, musicians, and authors since its appearance in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Works are included here if they have been described by scholars as relating substantially in their structure or content to the Divine Comedy.

The Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. Divided into three parts: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Heaven), it is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it had developed in the Catholic Church by the 14th century. It helped to establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language.

Medieval



 * In 1373, a little more than half a century after Dante's death, the Florentine authorities softened their attitude to him and decided to establish a department for the study of the Divine Comedy. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) was appointed to head the department in October 1373, and he sponsored its organization. In January 1374, Boccaccio wrote and delivered a series of lectures on the Comedy. In addition, Boccaccio is included in the work Origine, vita e costumi di Dante Alighieri, where his treatise Trattatello in laude di Dante provides a biography of Dante.
 * Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) translated, adapted, and explicitly referred to Dante's work.
 * "A Complaynt to His Lady," an early short poem, is written in terza rima, the rhyme scheme Dante invented for the Comedy.
 * Anelida and Arcite ends with a "compleynt" by Anelida, the lover jilted by Arcite; the compleynt begins with the phrase "So thirleth with the poynt of remembraunce" and ends with "Hath thirled with the poynt of remembraunce," copied from Purgatory 12.32, "la punctura di la rimembranza."
 * The House of Fame, a dream vision in three books in which the narrator is guided through the heavens by an otherworldly guide, has been described as a parody of the Comedy. The narrator echoes Inferno 2.32 in the poem (2.588–592).
 * The Monk's Tale from The Canterbury Tales describes (in greater and more emphatic detail) the plight of Count Ugolino (Inferno, cantos 32 and 33), referring explicitly to Dante's original text in 7.2459–2462.
 * The beginning of the last stanza of Troilus and Criseyde (5.1863-65) is modelled on Paradiso 12.28–30.

Early Modern

 * John Milton finds various uses for Dante, whose work he knew well:
 * Milton refers to Dante's insistence on the separation of worldly and religious power in Of Reformation, where he cites Inferno 19.115–117.
 * Beatrice's condemnation of corrupt and neglectful preachers, Paradiso 29.107–109 ("so that the wretched sheep, in ignorance, / return from pasture, having fed on wind") is translated and adapted in Lycidas 125–126, "The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed, / But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw," when Milton condemns corrupt clergy.

Nineteenth century



 * The title of Honoré de Balzac's work La Comédie humaine (the "Human Comedy," 1815–1848) is usually considered a conscious adaptation of Dante's.
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who translated the Divine Comedy into English, wrote a poem titled "Mezzo Cammin" ("Halfway," 1845), alluding to the first line of the Comedy, and a sonnet sequence (of six sonnets) under the title "Divina Commedia" (1867); these were published as flyleaves to his translation.
 * Karl Marx uses a paraphrase of Purgatory (V, 13) to conclude the preface to the first edition of Das Kapital (1867), as a kind of motto: "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti" ("follow your own road, and let the people talk").
 * Lesya Ukrainka's poem "The Forgotten Shadow" (1898) is a feminist reinterpretation of Dante and Beatrice. The forgotten shadow in the poem is Gemma Donati, Alighieri's wife.

Twentieth century

 * In E. M. Forster's novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), the character of Gino Carella, upon first introducing himself, quotes the first lines of Inferno (the novel includes several references to Dante's La Vita Nuova as well).
 * T. S. Eliot cites Inferno, XXVII, 61–66, as an epigraph to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915). Eliot cites heavily from and alludes to Dante in Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Ara vus prec (1920), and The Waste Land (1922).
 * Begun in 1916, Ezra Pound's Cantos take the Comedy as a model.
 * Samuel Beckett in his non-fiction essay "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce", published in Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (1929), compares Joyce's reassessments of the conventions of the English language to Dante's departure from Latin and synthesis of Italian dialects in the Divine Comedy.
 * In Jorge Luis Borges's 1945 short story The Aleph, the protagonist mourns the recent death of Beatriz Viterbo, whom he loved, at the beginning and meets his cousin Carlos Argentino Daneri.
 * Turkish poet Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı's famous poem "Otuz Beş Yaş" (lit. "Thirty Five Years") is beginning with the verses which contains a citation of Inferno: "Yaş otuz beş! Yolun yarısı eder / Dante gibi ortasındayız ömrün" ("Age thirty five! It is half of way / We are in the middle of life like Dante") won the Best Turkish Poem Prize in 1946.
 * Primo Levi cites Dante's Divine Comedy in the chapter called "Canto of Ulysses" in his novel Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man) (1947), published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz, and in other parts of this book; the fires of Hell are compared to the "real threat of the fires of the crematorium."
 * Malcolm Lowry paralleled Dante's descent into hell with Geoffrey Firmin's descent into alcoholism in his epic novel Under the Volcano (1947). In contrast to the original, Lowry's character explicitly refuses grace and "chooses hell," though Firmin does have a Dr. Vigil as a guide (and his brother, Hugh Firmin, quotes the Comedy from memory in ch. 6).
 * The seventh and last chapter from Leopoldo Marechal's first novel, Adam Buenosayres (1948), is a parody of the Inferno, entitled "Journey To The Dark City Of Cacodelphia", wherein the titular character meets several of his literary contemporaries (including his guide).
 * Poet Derek Walcott, in 1949, published Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos, which he later acknowledged as influenced by Dante.
 * Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote extensively about Dante, included two short texts in his Dreamtigers (El Hacedor, 1960): "Paradiso, XXXI, 108" and "Inferno, I, 32," which paraphrase and comment on Dante's lines.
 * African-American author LeRoi Jones, in 1965, published the novel The System of Dante's Hell, in which a young African-American man lives nomadically in the Southern United States, struggling with segregation and racism. The book correlates the man's experience with Dante's Inferno, and includes a diagram of the fictional hell described by Dante.
 * Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel The First Circle (1968) takes its title from the Inferno. Set in a special Gulag for scientists, it parallels Dante's First Circle (Limbo) where virtuous philosophers of antiquity are separated from God and humanity but not punished in any other way.
 * James Merrill published his Divine Comedies, a collection of poetry, in 1976; a selection in that volume, "The Book of Ephraim", consists "of conversations held, via the Ouija board, with dead friends and spirits in 'another world.'"
 * Authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote a modern sequel to the Inferno, Inferno (1976), in which a science fiction author dies during a fan convention and finds himself in Hell, where Benito Mussolini functions as his guide. They wrote a subsequent sequel to their own work, Escape from Hell (2009).
 * Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills (1985) uses Dante's Inferno as a model for the trek made by two young black poets who spend the days before Christmas doing odd jobs in an affluent African American community. The young men soon discover the price paid by the inhabitants of Linden Hills for pursuing the American dream.
 * Author Monique Wittig's Virgile, Non (published in English as Across the Acheron, 1985) is a lesbian–feminist parody of the Divine Comedy set in the utopia/dystopia of second-wave feminism.
 * Mark E. Rogers used the structure of Dante's hell in his 1998 comedic novel Samurai Cat Goes to Hell (the last in the Samurai Cat series), and includes the trope of a gate to hell with an "abandon hope" inscription.

Twenty-first century

 * Irish poet Seamus Heaney published a poem, "A Dream of Solstice", on the front page of the Irish Times (18 January 2000) that begins with a translation of Paradiso 33.58–61 as "Like somebody who sees things when he's dreaming / And after the dream lives with the aftermath / Of what he felt, no other trace remaining, / So I live now".


 * Nick Tosches's In The Hand of Dante (2002) weaves a contemporary tale about the finding of an original manuscript of the Divine Comedy with an imagined account of Dante's years composing the work.
 * Inferno by Peter Weiss (written in 1964, published in 2003) is a play inspired by the Comedy, the first part of a planned trilogy.
 * The Dante Club is a 2003 novel by Matthew Pearl that tells the story of various American poets translating The Divine Comedy in post-civil war Boston, who must also investigate murders being committed based on the punishments in the text, due to their desire to protect Dante's reputation and the fact that only they have the necessary expertise to understand the murderer's motivations.
 * Óscar Esquivias in his trilogy of novels Inquietud en el Paraíso (2005), La ciudad del Gran Rey (2006) and Viene la noche (2007) shows his personal vision of Dante's Divine Comedy.
 * In the novel The Tenth Circle (2006) by Jodi Picoult, the main character's comic strip, The Tenth Circle, is based on the Inferno.
 * Dante himself is a character in The Master of Verona (2007), a novel by David Blixt that combines the people of Dante's time with the characters of Shakespeare's Italian plays.
 * Dale E. Basye's book series Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go (began in 2008) features a modified version of the nine circles of hell.
 * S.A. Alenthony's novel The Infernova (2009) is a parody of the Inferno as seen from an atheist's perspective, with Mark Twain acting as the guide.
 * The title of Yann Martel's 2010 novel Beatrice and Virgil is an allusion to two of the main characters in The Divine Comedy.
 * Sylvain Reynards' 2011 novel Gabriel's Inferno was inspired by the relationship between Dante and Beatrice.
 * Dante Quintana from Benjamin Alire Sáenz's 2012 novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is named after Dante.
 * Laura Elizabeth Woollett's 2014 novel The Wood of Suicides is named after the second ring of the seventh circle of hell.


 * Adam Roberts' Purgatory Mount is a 2021 science fiction novel that features a huge mountain on a distant planet resembling Dante's Mount Purgatory.

Sculpture



 * Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's sculpture Ugolino and His Sons is based on the account of Count Ugolino in Inferno Canto XXXIII.


 * Auguste Rodin's sculptural group The Gates of Hell draws heavily on the Inferno. The component sculpture, Paolo and Francesca, represents Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, whom Dante meets in Canto 5. The version of this sculpture known as The Kiss shows the book that Paolo and Francesca were reading. Other component sculptures include Ugolino and his children (Canto 33) and The Shades, who originally pointed to the phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate" ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here") from Canto 3. Sculptures of Grief and Despair cannot be assigned to particular sections of the Inferno, but are in keeping with the overall theme. The famous component sculpture The Thinker, near the top of the gate, and also produced as an independent work, may represent Dante himself.


 * Timothy Schmalz created a series of 100 sculptures, one for each canto, on the 700th anniversary of the date of Dante’s death.

Illustrations

 * Giovanni di Paolo illuminated Dante's Paradiso with 61 miniature tempera paintings in the 1440s.
 * Sandro Botticelli made the most famous set of illustrations during the Renaissance for a manuscript of the Divine Comedy commissioned by Lorenzo Pierfrancesco de' Medici; Botticelli also designed a series of illustrations for the 1481 edition of the poem.
 * Stradanus prepared a series of illustrations of Inferno.
 * A commentary by La Comedia di Dante Alighieri con la nova esposizione written by Alessandro Vellutello and printed in 1544 by Francesco Marcolini, was illustrated with 87 engravings, possibly by Giovanni Britto.
 * John Flaxman's set of one hundred and eleven illustrations were influential across Europe on artists such as Goya and Ingres, because of their radically minimalist style.
 * William Blake planned and executed several watercolour illustrations to the Divine Comedy, including The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides. Though he did not finish the series before his death in 1827, they offer a powerful visual interpretation of the poem.
 * Gustave Doré made the most famous illustrations in the 19th century; the plates were drawn in 1857, and published in 1860 with Henry Francis Cary's translation.
 * Franz von Bayros illustrated a 1921 edition in colour.
 * Salvador Dalí made a series of prints for the Comedy in 1950–51.
 * British artist Tom Phillips illustrated his own translation of the Inferno, published in 1985, with four illustrations per canto.

Painting

 * Michelangelo's The Last Judgment depicts Charon and King Minos as they are described in the Inferno.
 * Eugène Delacroix made his name with The Barque of Dante (1822), a painting depicting Dante and Virgil crossing the river Styx.
 * Joseph Anton Koch illustrated Dante's Divine Comedy and in the period 1824–1829 painted the four frescoes in the Dante Room of Casa Massimo.
 * William-Adolphe Bouguereau, the prolific 19th-century academic artist, painted Dante And Virgil In Hell in 1850.
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Pre-Raphaelite, made several paintings of the Divine Comedy, including Dante's Vision of Rachel and Leah (1855, for Purgatorio XXVII), Pia de' Tolomei, his largest painting Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (1871), and Beata Beatrix (1872).
 * Henry Holiday is best known for his 1884 painting Dante and Beatrice.
 * Graba' made a cycle La Divina Commedia consisting of 111 paintings in 2003 exhibited in the Art Hall Sint-Pietersabdij in Ghent.


 * Luke Chueh made a series of paintings based on the Inferno in 2009 exhibited in Gallery 1988.

Architecture

 * The Palacio Barolo in Buenos Aires, completed in 1923, was designed in accordance with the cosmology of Dante's Divine Comedy, motivated by Italian architect Mario Palanti's admiration for Dante.
 * The Danteum is an unbuilt monument designed by the Italian modernist architect Giuseppe Terragni in 1938 at the behest of Benito Mussolini's fascist dictatorship.

Dance

 * Watson_and_Lamb_as_Dante_and_Beatrice_in_The_Dante_Project.jpg 2021, the Royal Opera House put on The Dante Project, choreographed by Wayne McGregor to new music composed and conducted by Thomas Adès, with set and costumes by Tacita Dean. It was danced by The Royal Ballet, led by its principal dancer [[Edward Watson (dancer)|Edward Watson]] as Dante, in his final appearance after 20 years working with and interpreting McGregor. The music was performed live by an orchestra of 75 musicians. Sarah Crompton called the work "bold, beautiful, emotional and utterly engaging". The dance is in three sections. "Inferno" shows Dante's journey to hell, guided by Virgil, in "remarkably free and inventive" choreography, "rich in feeling". "Purgatorio" shows Dante meeting two incarnations of his young self, and three of the woman he loves, Beatrice. Watson dances with the living Beatrice (Francesca Hayward) "in lovely, poetic flow", and then with the heavenly Beatrice (Sarah Lamb) "all unfolding limbs and ethereal gestures". "Paradiso" has Dante in heaven with the dancers skittering about the stage all in white, in what Crompton calls a mood "of abstracted joy, deep but dazzling".

Opera



 * In Claudio Monteverdi's 1607 opera L'Orfeo, the title character is bombarded with the famous line "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate" as he attempts to enter the underworld.
 * Gaetano Donizetti's 1837 opera Pia de' Tolomei centers around the life of the titular Pia de' Tolomei as mentioned in Purgatorio Canto XIII.
 * Numerous mainly 19th century operas treat the story of Francesca da Rimini, many of them including those by Pellico (1818), Strepponi (1823), Carlini, Mercadante, Quilici, Generali, Staffa, Manna, Fournier, Tamburini, Borgatta, Morlacchi, Papparlardo, Nordal, Maglioni, Bellini, DeVasinis, Meiners (1841), Cannetti, Brancaccio, Rolland, Ruggieri, Pinelli, Franchini, Meiners (again, this time in 1860), Gilson, Sescewich, Boullard, Marcarini, Moscuzza, Goetz, Cagnoni, Thomas, Impallomeni, Gilson, Nápravník, Rachmaninov (in 1906), Leoni, Zandonai (1914, based on the 1901 play by Gabriele D'Annunzio), and Henried (in 1920) all having that same title.
 * Benjamin Godard's Dante et Béatrice from 1890 depicts Dante not as a famous poet, but as a young man implicated in political and love intrigues in his quest for Beatrice.
 * Gianni Schicchi, one of the operas making up Giacomo Puccini's Il Trittico alongside Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica, centers around an incident concerning the titular Gianni Schicchi de' Cavalcanti mentioned in Inferno Canto XXX. Composed in 1917–18, it contains the aria "O mio babbino caro", one of Puccini's best known, and one of the most popular arias in opera.
 * Louis Andriessen's 2008 opera La Commedia is a retelling of The Divine Comedy.
 * Lucia Ronchetti's 2021 opera Inferno is based on the Inferno section of The Divine Comedy. Its libretto consists mostly of Dante's original writing as compiled by the composer.

Classical music


By 1995, the Divine Comedy had been set to music over 120 times; Gioacchino Rossini created two such settings. Only 8 of the settings are of the complete Commedia, "the most famous" being Liszt's symphony; others have composed music for some of Dante's characters, while yet others have set passages of the Commedia to music.


 * Franz Liszt's Symphony to Dante's Divina Commedia (completed 1856) has two movements: "Inferno" and "Purgatorio." A concluding "Magnificat" is included at the end of the "Purgatorio" movement and replaces the planned third movement, which was to be called "Paradiso" (Liszt was dissuaded by Richard Wagner from his original plan). Liszt also composed a Dante Sonata (started 1837, completed 1849).
 * Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky's 1876 Francesca da Rimini (subtitled "Symphonic Fantasy After Dante") is a symphonic poem based on an episode in the fifth canto of the Inferno.
 * The text of the short prayer from the opening lines of Canto 33 of Paradiso was set to music for a cappella women's voices by Giuseppe Verdi. Composed between 1886 and 1888, "Laudi alla Vergine Maria" (Praises to the Virgin Mary), the third movement of his Four Sacred Pieces was one of the last pieces written before his death.
 * Henry Barraud's cantata for five voices and 15 instruments, La divine comédie, based on Dante's text, was composed in 1972.


 * Dutch composer Louis Andriessen's 2008 film opera in five parts La Commedia incorporates texts from Vondel and the Old Testament, in addition to The Divine Comedy. The five parts are "The City of Dis, or The Ship of Fools", "Racconto dall'Inferno", "Lucifer", "The Garden of Delights", and "Luce Etterna".

Popular music

 * Italian progressive rock band Metamorfosi has released two concept albums based on the Divine Comedy, Inferno (in 1972) and Paradiso (2004).
 * On his 1992 album Façanhas, Brazilian musician Arrigo Barnabé set the first 48 lines of the Inferno (translated to Portuguese by the famous poet Augusto de Campos) to music.
 * F. M. Einheit of Einstürzende Neubauten and Andreas Ammer collaborated on an experimental recording called Radio Inferno, a 1993 radio play adaptation of the Comedy.
 * Mexican death metal band Transmetal released El Infierno de Dante in 1993. The English version, Dante's Inferno, was released in 1994.
 * Metal band Iced Earth's album Burnt Offerings (1995) contains the epic 16 minute song "Dante's Inferno".
 * Technical death metal guitarist Fredrik Thordendal (from the Swedish Death metal band Meshuggah) used quotes from the Divine Comedy in the song "Dante's Wild Inferno" from his 1997 solo album Sol Niger Within.
 * The song "Canto IV (Limbo)" from Progressive music group Discipline's 1997 album Unfolded Like Staircase describes the sorrow of those souls who never knew a deity.
 * Austrian gothic metal band Dreams of Sanity's 1997 debut album Komödia is partially based on The Divine Comedy.
 * Zao refer to the Divine Comedy on their 1999 album Liberate Te Ex Inferis, covering the first five circles of the Inferno.
 * Tangerine Dream has released albums setting all the three parts of The Divine Comedy to music: Inferno is a recording of a live performance at the St Marien zu Bernau Cathedral in 2001, and Purgatorio and Paradiso are studio albums from 2004 and 2006 respectively.
 * German Dark Electro band yelworC has made two albums of a trilogy based on the three canticas of the Divine Comedy, Trinity, released in 2004 from material partially composed in the 90s, and Icolation, released in 2007.
 * Punk singer Mike Watt's third solo album, The Secondman's Middle Stand (2004), is a concept album that derives its structure from The Divine Comedy.
 * Australian goth-electro band the Tenth Stage has a self-titled track (2006) that describes the singer's descent past the nine stages of Dante's poem to a 10th stage of Hell.
 * Thrash metal band Sepultura's tenth album, Dante XXI (2006), is based on The Divine Comedy.
 * Professor Fate's album Inferno (2007) was inspired by the Comedy.
 * The Finnish progressive rock magazine Colossus and Musea Records produced three multi-disc boxsets dedicated to each of the canticas of the Divine Comedy – Inferno (2008), Purgatorio (2009) and Paradiso (2010) – with the participation of several bands such as Yesterdays, Little Tragedies, Nathan Mahl and Phideaux.
 * American post-hardcore band Alesana's fourth album, A Place Where the Sun Is Silent (2011), is primarily based on the Inferno.
 * British rapper and saxophonist Soweto Kinch's 2013 album The Legend of Mike Smith is based on the Inferno, and includes songs named for the nine circles of hell.
 * American progressive metal band Symphony X's 2015 album Underworld is based on the Inferno.
 * American singer-songwriter Ethel Cain's debut album Preacher's Daughter (2022) contains the song "Ptolomaea", named after one of the four concentric rings of the Ninth Circle of Hell, as depicted in the Inferno.
 * Irish Singer-Songwriter Hozier's 2023 EP, Eat Your Young, and the following album Unreal Unearth features songs inspired by discrete circles present in the Inferno.
 * The band Nanowar of Steel released a song "Disco Metal" on their 2023 album "Dislike to False Metal", containing a zombified Dante and the phrase "Pape, Pape Satàn Aleppe. Pape, Pape Satàn Aleppe. Pape, Pape Satàn Aleppe".

Radio

 * Inferno Revisited, a modernised interpretation of Dante written by Peter Howell, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 17 April 1983.
 * Between March and April 2014, the BBC adapted The Divine Comedy for Radio 4, starring Blake Ritson and John Hurt playing younger and older versions of Dante.

Film

 * The 1911 silent film L'Inferno was directed by Giuseppe de Liguoro, starring Salvatore Papa. It was released on DVD in 2004, with a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream.
 * The 1924 silent film Dante's Inferno, directed by Henry Otto, features the 1911 film, L'Inferno; the section on the inferno is reduced to a ten-minute segment.
 * The 1935 motion picture Dante's Inferno, directed by Harry Lachman, written by Philip Klein and starring Spencer Tracy, is about a fairground attraction based on Inferno. The film features a 10-minute fantasy sequence visualizing Dante's Inferno.
 * The 1975 Pier Paolo Pasolini film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is set in four segments inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy: the Anteinferno, the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit and the Circle of Blood.
 * Stan Brakhage's eight-minute hand-painted film, The Dante Quartet (1987), is inspired by the Divine Comedy.
 * Peter Greenaway adapted Cantos I to VIII for BBC Two as A TV Dante (1987–1990).
 * Krzysztof Kieślowski planned to create a new trilogy inspired by Dante's The Divine Comedy after finishing The Three Colors Trilogy (1993–1994). This intention, however, was abandoned after his death in 1996 until Tom Tykwer decided to shoot the film Heaven in 2002, using Kieslowski's original screenplay. In 2005, Bosnian director Danis Tanović directed Hell based on Kieslowski's screenplay sketches. The screenplay was completed by Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Kieslowski's screenwriter.
 * The motion picture Se7en (1995) stars Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as two detectives who investigate a series of ritualistic murders inspired by the seven deadly sins. The film makes many references to Dante's Divine Comedy.
 * Ridley Scott's 2001 film Hannibal has Hannibal Lecter as a medievalist lecturing on Dante's Divine Comedy, and to some extent echoing the work in his murderous methods.
 * Jean-Luc Godard's 2004 film Notre musique is structured in three parts, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise respectively, alluding to the Divine Comedy.
 * The film Dante's Inferno (2007) is based on Sandow Birk's contemporary drawings of the Divine Comedy. The film accurately retells the original story, but with the addition of more recent residents of Hell such as Adolf Hitler and Boss Tweed.
 * The 2014 film As Above, So Below directed by John Erick Dowdle, is based on Dante Alighieri's Inferno. It is presented as found footage of a documentary crew's experience exploring the Catacombs of Paris and draws inspiration of the nine layers of Hell.
 * The 2015 Chinese documentary Behemoth (Chinese: 悲兮魔兽; pinyin: bēixī móshòu), directed by Zhao Liang, is loosely based on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and is about the environmental, sociological, and public health effects of coal-mining in China and Inner Mongolia.
 * The 2016 mystery thriller Inferno makes many references to The Divine Comedy and to the Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli including hiding a word puzzle in a version of the painting Map of Hell with the levels of Hell rearranged. There's a clue in an email that refers to a passage from Paradiso and the virus that serves as the catalyst for the film's plot is named "Inferno."
 * The 2018 film The House That Jack Built features Matt Dillon as protagonist Jack, a serial killer who believes that his murders are a piece of art, similar to the Divine Comedy. Jack encounters Virgil, or Virg, as he calls him, as a hallucination portrayed by Bruno Ganz, (well known from his role as Adolf Hitler in 2004's Downfall). Jack carries on a commentary with Virgil throughout the film sometimes expressing his desire of becoming an architect despite being an engineer. Jack ends up wearing Dante Alighieri's red robe while unsuccessfully attempting to escape Inferno after rejecting Virg's advice to follow him into Purgatorio, the only safe way of reaching the destination of Paradiso.
 * The 2020 film Friend of the World references The Divine Comedy and begins with a direct quote by Dante Alighieri.

Television

 * The 4th season (2005) of the BBC drama series Messiah: The Harrowing focuses on a serial killer who takes inspiration from Inferno to punish his or her victims.
 * In the tenth season (2014–2015) of Criminal Minds, the case in the second episode, "Burn", written by Janine Sherman Barrois, tracks the actions of a serial killer whose crimes are inspired by the punishment in each circle of Hell.
 * The Good Place (2016–2020) follows an analogous pattern in its main plot, with its characters ascending from hell, through struggles on earth, and into paradise over the course of the show.

Animations, comics and graphic novels



 * DC/Vertigo Comics' Kid Eternity's premier appearance in Hit Comics #25, (published by Quality Comics in December 1942), tells the story of Kid and his companion Jerry Sullivan's travels to a Dante-inspired Hell to free one of Kid's partners. The structure of the comic also draws features from Dante's Inferno.
 * In the 1946 Looney Tunes short Book Revue, the Big Bad Wolf slips and falls into a copy of Dante's Inferno.
 * Mickey's Inferno is a comic book adaptation from 1949 featuring Disney characters including Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Donald Duck. Written by Guido Martina and drawn by Angelo Bioletto, it was published by the then-Italian Disney comic book licensee Mondadori in the monthly Topolino  from October to March 1950. An English-language version appeared in the aptly numbered Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #666 (March 2006).
 * Manga series Demon Lord Dante from Go Nagai (1972, rebooted in 2002) was inspired by the Gustave Doré illustrations of The Divine Comedy.
 * Ty Templeton parodied Dante in his comic book Stig's Inferno (1985-1986).
 * Manga series Saint Seiya's "Hades Inferno" arc (1986), has many characters and structures of Hell based on the circles of Dante, where they're called the Nine Prisons.
 * Gary Panter's Jimbo: Adventures in 'Paradise (1988), Jimbo in Purgatory (2004), and Jimbo's Inferno (2006) are three graphic novels telling a mis-recounted adaptation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy melded with Boccaccio's Decameron and a bit of Canterbury Tales, John Milton, John Dryden, and pop culture references).
 * Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comic series, running from January 1989 to March 1996, features a heavily Dante-inspired Hell, including the Wood of Suicides, the Malebolge, and the City of Dis; Lucifer is imprisoned in Hell. Mike Carey's spin-off series Lucifer, also from DC/Vertigo Comics, was based on characters from The Sandman. It features aspects of a Dante-inspired Hell and Heaven, particularly the Primum Mobile and the Nine Sections.
 * Todd McFarlane's Spawn supervillain Malebolgia (Spawn #1, May 1992) is named after the Malebolge.
 * In the 1996 Spanish comic El infierno, part of the Superlópez series, the titular character travels to Hell to prevent a demonic contract from being fulfilled. The search reveals a structure identical to the one in the Divine Comedy. Dante is also namedropped many times in the album.
 * The 1997 anime Revolutionary Girl Utena has a second ending theme song titled "Virtual Star Embryology" that has a stanza that lists the Spheres of Heaven from the third and final part of the Divine Comedy. It lists from the First Sphere: The Moon to the Ninth Sphere: The Primum Mobile.
 * The main antagonists of the manga Fullmetal Alchemist (2001–2010) and anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009–2010) are seven homunculi, each named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins with the exception of Father. There were originally eight, but Greed defected due to his avarice. In addition, Lust is killed when Mustang incinerates her beyond her ability to regenerate using flame alchemy, a direct reference to Purgatorio.
 * In the 2004 Japanese gothic horror visual novel Animamundi: Dark Alchemist, the main character is guided through the nine circles of Hell towards the end of the game.
 * In the manga series Cesare (2005) by Fuyumi Soryo, the Divine Comedy and the friendship between Alighieri and Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor, is discussed at length.
 * The Japanese murder mystery visual novel and anime series Umineko no Naku Koro ni (Umineko When they Cry) debuted in August 2007. It contains several elements from the Divine Comedy, including two characters named Beatrice (as the Golden Witch), Virgilia (as the Endless Witch) and the Stakes (Seven Deadly Sins).
 * The anime adaptation has an ending theme entitled La Divina Tragedia ~Makyoku~, named after the title La Divina Comedia. "Makyoku" is the opposite of "Shinkyoku", Divine Comedy's Japanese title.
 * In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), Buck says, "Abandon all hope, ye who enters there".
 * Dante's Inferno: The Graphic Novel (2012) by Joseph Lanzara utilizes Gustave Doré's 1857 illustrations of the Divine Comedy in the form of a comic book inspired by the poem.
 * The short animation, Dante's Hell Animated (2014), featuring Eric Roberts as Dante, is based on Dino di Durante's original paintings of Dante's Inferno.
 * The Cartoon Network's debut miniseries, Over the Garden Wall (November 2014), corresponds to the structure of the Inferno; it stars a lost poet guided by a woman named Beatrice.
 * IDW Publishing's Godzilla in Hell miniseries (2015) has Godzilla finding himself in Hell after accidentally destroying the planet in a battle with SpaceGodzilla and rampaging his way through the levels of Hell to find a way out. After destroying the "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" sign with his atomic breath, he battles demons and manifestations of familiar monsters representing various sins. He finally turns a monster-part version of the Mount of Purgatory into a battlefield between the forces of Heaven and Hell that want to recruit him into their ranks.
 * In the manga series Black Clover (since 2015), there is a villain named Dante Zogratis.
 * The 2017 anime series Sin Nanatsu no Taizai (Seven Mortal Sins) incorporates elements from the Divine Comedy, including Cocytus in episode 1, the inscription on the gates in episode 9, and a reenactment of Dante's journey to the lowest level of Hell.
 * In the 2017 Disney/Pixar film Coco, there is a Xolo dog named Dante.
 * Dave Sim's sequel series to his comic Cerebus, Cerebus in Hell? (2017) satirically utilizes Gustave Doré's engravings for the Divine Comedy as backgrounds and plot devices.

Video games

 * Beyond Software wrote Dante's Inferno in 1986 for the Commodore 64.
 * Final Fantasy IV (from 1991) features four Elemental Lords named Rubicante, Scarmiglione, Barbariccia, and Cagnazzo, after members of the Malebranche. A mid-game boss, Calcabrina, also has the name of a Malebranche demon. Also, there exists a superboss in the DS version named Geryon.
 * 1991's Halo 3: ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) contains many references to the poem. For example, the Rookie is called into Section Nine, which is very icy and cold, similar to the ninth ring of Hell. In addition, the player's guide through the end of the game is called Vergil. Further, there are characters in the game that correspond to each of the sins.
 * Tamashii no Mon Dante no Shinkyoku yori (魂の門 ダンテ「神曲」より or The Gate of Souls ~ From Dante's Divine Comedy), a 1991 side-scrolling action-adventure game inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy released on PC-98 and FM Towns.
 * In Wild Arms 2 from 1999, there is a gang called Cocytus, whose members are named Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca.
 * In the game series Devil May Cry (2001), the protagonist's name is Dante, his brother is Vergil, and Dante's partner-in-crime's name is Trish, a derivative of the name Beatrice. It uses the nine circles in its world structure, the seven deadly sins as enemy names in the third game, and parts of Lake Cocytus (Caina, Antenora and Judecca) as names of enemies in the fifth game.
 * In Persona 3 FES (released in Japan on April 19, 2007) areas are called Malebolge, Cocytus, Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, Judecca, and Empyrean.
 * Dante's Inferno is a 2010 action-adventure video game developed by Visceral Games and published by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. The game was also developed by Artificial Mind and Movement for release on the PlayStation Portable. The story is loosely based on Dante's Inferno.
 * Dante's Inferno is a series of six comic books based on the same video game. Published by WildStorm from December 2009 through May 2010, the series was written by Christos Gage with art by Diego Latorre.
 * Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic is a direct-to-DVD animated film released on February 9, 2010. The film is also a spin-off from Dante's Inferno.
 * The 2012 game Resident Evil: Revelations references Dante's Inferno extensively. A bioterrorist organization, "Il Veltro", believes society has degraded into a living version of the nine circles. Verses of the poem are provided at the start of each level, while a number of enemies in the game are named after the Malebranche also featured in the poem. The music in the final chapter has a choir eerily singing lines from Inferno, and the final boss actually quotes it before entering his chamber.
 * Released on Steam in September 2020, the plot of Ultrakill revolves around machines descending through Hell in order to take blood from the souls of the damned. The different layers are named after those seen in Inferno and many feature punishments similar to those seen in the poem. The game takes significant liberties with the material of Inferno, and some layers bear little or no resemblance to how Dante describes them. For example, Greed, has an Ancient Egyptian style in the game and is where Sisyphus was being punished in, who Dante never directly mentioned.
 * Korean game studio Project Moon's 2023 game Limbus Company features a variety of characters based on classical literary figures and characters. Among these characters is Dante, the manager and main playable character of the game, and Vergilius, Dante's guide. The game also refers to its individual chapters as "Canto."

Card games

 * The trading card game Yu-Gi-Oh! released a series of cards known as "Burning Abyss" starting in 2014. All cards in the series are based on the eighth circle of Hell and the Malebranche, including Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice.

Tabletop role-playing games
Several aspects of the Divine Comedy could have influenced many tabletop role-playing games: visiting ordered parallel worlds on a planar crawl, a gamified progression by trials and levels towards salvation, or using deciphered symbolism to acquire knowledge that gives more power to characters.


 * The tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons named some levels of the Nine Hells after locations in Dante's Inferno. The game borrowed the name "malebranche" for one diabolical race, although the original write-up mistranslated that word as "evil horn".
 * The Planescape setting, in particular, borrows many elements from the book (some wholesale, some piecemeal), and much of the expanded cosmology, with dimensions for the dead based on alignment and most dimensions having many separate layers, are inspired by those seen in the Inferno. The planecrawling gameplay of Planescape and early setting of D&D could be heavily inspired by the structured travel of Dante through the layers of the planes of the Divine Comedy.
 * Acheron Games published Inferno, a tabletop role-playing game heavily inspired by the depiction of hell as found in the Divine Comedy.

Web Originals

 * One of the food items listed in SCP-261's experiment log is a package of nine distinct circular, concentric biscuits labeled "Dante's", and the tagline on the packaging reads "Tastes like hell!".