What do you think was Dante's purpose in writing Inferno?

Like the rest of The Divine Comedy, Dante's Inferno is a vast work encompassing many ideas, questions, and themes. However, Dante had a few major reasons for writing this first part of his epic poem. First of all, Dante wanted to write an account of the search for spiritual atonement and salvation, and this desire drew heavily from Dante's own experiences. Dante was living in exile while writing Infernoand so, much like his...

Like the rest of The Divine Comedy, Dante's Inferno is a vast work encompassing many ideas, questions, and themes. However, Dante had a few major reasons for writing this first part of his epic poem. First of all, Dante wanted to write an account of the search for spiritual atonement and salvation, and this desire drew heavily from Dante's own experiences. Dante was living in exile while writing Inferno and so, much like his poetic counterpart, he felt like he had lost his way and needed direction. In that case, Inferno is in many ways Dante's attempt to work through his own feelings of being lost and unsure of himself, especially in spiritual terms. Secondly, Inferno is a critique of the corruption of both the Catholic Church and Italian government, especially the government of his native Florence. Many of the tortured souls that Dante encounters in Hell were actually real people, and many of them were high ranking Italian politicians or Catholic Church officials. Thus, Dante uses the poem as a method of critiquing the most powerful Italians of his day, and so the poem is not only an account of a spiritual journey, but also an attempt to motivate real social change and reform by exposing the wrongdoings of those in power.