Draghignazzo

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Draghignazzo is one of the ten devils in Malacoda's escort, named during the roll call of the decuria in the fifth bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell. His name appears alongside that of Libicocco in the verse that calls the troop of devils to gather around Dante and Virgil, and recurs again when, during the farcical brawl between Alichino and Calcabrina, he too attempts to seize the two poets along with the others. The name belongs to the series of inventive and varied coinages devised by Dante for the devils of this bolgia, whose function is openly comic: names such as Scarmiglione and Graffiacane combine a visual element with a phonetic one, producing a general effect of blustering and farcical aggression, in keeping with the deliberately non-tragic register reserved for the guardians of the barrators.