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  • Essay / Analysis of canto 34 in Dante's Inferno - 1017

    In canto 34, the first three terms are each used once. According to the notes in Allen Mandelbaum's translation of Inferno, the first term Lucifer means "bringer of light" and was used to describe "the most beautiful of all angels before he rebelled against God." After his rebellion and expulsion from heaven, “Lucifer was renamed Satan” (fourth term). The second term Dis, was “used by Virgil in the Aeneid to describe Pluto; Dante then adopts this term to designate Lucifer. Finally, the term Beelzebub comes from the Bible where it was “the name given to the chief of all demons in the Gospels”. The term Beelzebub also refers to “a false god powerless in the face of true divinity.” Lucifer's appearance is described in detail in what appears to be an effort to emphasize the theme of deception; After all, it was Lucifer's betrayal of God that brought him, a once beautiful creature, to a pitiful place and gave him the most repulsive physical characteristics. In lines 28 to 37, Dante (the character) recounts the sight of Lucifer in the