Inferno Research Paper Anthony K. Cassell stated in his critical essay titled "Farinata" that "the methods of punishment in Dante's Inferno are exquisitely diverse." The songs of Hell focus on the Circles or subdivisions of Hell that describe specific punishments for suffering souls based on the sin committed. The further one descends into Hell, the worse the sins committed, therefore the greater the agonies of the punishments. In the Inferno, Dante highlights the issue of sin by providing examples of sins of which he has taken note. He places guilty souls at different levels of Hell, depending on which crimes he believes are the worst to commit, showing “how Dante represented his understanding of God's justice” (Cassell). Dante Alighieri's Inferno should be seen as a manual of moral and religious instruction because it represents the theme of divine justice for sin. Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet and moral philosopher. He was considered the father of modern Italian. He was born into a family that had a history of involvement in the Florentine political scene. At the time of his arranged marriage to the daughter of a family friend, he was in love with another woman named Beatrice. Beatrice had a great influence on Dante's epic. Dante was part of the White Guelphs, but was exiled from Florence in 1302 by the Black Guelphs, the political faction in power at the time that was in cahoots with Pope Boniface VIII, who Dante meets in Hell in his epic. This epic, The Divine Comedy, for which Dante is best known, is composed of sections of the three levels of the Christian afterlife: purgatory, heaven, and hell. On the Biography.com site about Dante Alighieri, it says that Dante's Commedia was “written as a warning to a corrupt… medium of paper… and. "Hell." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. MartinPuchner. Brief Third ed. vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013. 1053-172. Press. Beginning at 1650.Burge, James. “Dante: reason and religion”. History Today 61.3 (2011): 10-15.Full text of Humanities (H.W. Wilson). Network. May 9, 2014. Cassell, Anthony K. “Farinata.” Dante's fearsome art of justice. Toronto: University of Toronto P,1984. 15-31, period. in Criticism of Classical and Medieval Literature. Ed. Lawrence J.Trudeau. vol. 142. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Literature Resource Center. Wednesday 9 May 2014."Dante Alighieri." 2014. The Biography.com website. May 10, 2014.http://www.biography.com/people/dante-9265912.Franke, William. “Dante's Hermeneutic Complicity in Violence and Fraud in Inferno IX-XVII.” University of Toronto Quarterly 82.1 (2013): 1-19. Complete text of humanities (H.W. Wilson). Network. May 9 2014.