Dante Club

The Dante corporation begins with the murder of fictional Chief Justice Judge Healey, who had avoided taking a position to stop or support the escaped slaves of the South. Found by his chamberm instigate near a white flag atop a short wooden staff, Healey had been hit in the head and then left in his garden to be eaten alive by strategically placed maggots and stung by hornets. Holmes, who examines the body for the police, recognizes the correlation amidst the murder and the vindicatements seen in Dantes Inferno.Then Reverend Talbot, who was paid by the Harvard Corporation to write against Dante, was found dead in an underground cemetery, buried up to his waist upside down, his feet burnt. Members of the Dante Club, a group of poets translating The Divine Comedy from Italian into English, notice the parallels between the murders and the punishments detailed in Dantes Inferno. The club, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. , and James Russell Lowell, set s out to solve the murders, fearing that the virtue will ruin Dantes burgeoning reputation in America, thus making their translation a failure.Then, Phineas Jennison, both a wealthy contributor to the Harvard Corporation and friend to the translators (a schismatic), is sliced open exactly down the midstall killed in extreme fashion and undeniable resemblance to the punishments of people in Dantes Inferno. Eventually, the murderer is observed to be a former Civil War Soldier Dan Teal, a man who worked at Ticknor and Fields. operate partly mad by the trauma of his war experiences, Teal hears Dante Club member George Washington Greene good-looking sermons on Dante, and becomes convinced that Dante alone understood the need for perfect justice in the world.With protecting Dante as his sole motivation, Teal takes it upon himself to release Hells punishments as indicated by Dante, in order to purify the city. Teal finds each of his victims when learning of their involvement in the st opping of the translations, which become their respective sins. The club eventually tries to capture him, with the aid of Bostons first African-American policeman Nicholas Rey, the only other person who saw the connection, while attempting to punish Harvard treasurer Dr. Manning and Pliny Mead (the traitors). Mead was a student of the Dante course who helped betray his eacher by cooperating with Manning. He later fled when the club attempted to punish him for his involvement in stopping the translation of the Inferno. They later encounter him as he tries to round up the translators, to punish them for not embracing his work. Dr. Manningsaved by Longfellow, Holmes, Rey, Lowell, and Fieldsrealizes the situation as he corned from his attempted punishment of being buried naked in ice. He sees Teal on the pass with a gun to Longfellow, and Manning ends the murderers life, thus returning the city to normal.