A narrator recounts an allegorical descent into the underworld after becoming lost in a dark wood. Guided by a classical poet, he travels through ordered circles where sinners endure punishments reflecting their offences, meeting mythic, historical, and contemporary figures whose fates enact moral and political critique. Each canto presents vivid, symbolic episodes that map a hierarchical system of vice, responsibility, and divine justice, employing striking imagery and carefully arranged contrapasso. The journey culminates at Hell’s center and establishes the cosmic order that propels the soul onward toward purification and eventual ascent.