Humanism In Dantes Inferno

Considering Dante’s Humanist Perspective in Commedia To many historians Dante Alighieri lies firmly beyond the reach of early Renaissance Florence, on the cusp yet still belonging to the late Middle Ages. Few concede that the famous poet belonged to the former, but here proposed is an alternative: approaching history as it truly played out, as a continuum. Early humanist thought did not suddenly appear in Florence shortly after Dante’s death, but rather the ideas and attitudes of the city and its people began to change quite slowly, gaining momentum in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Though Francesco Petrarca may be considered the father of humanism, it is seen in Alighieri's most famous work, La Divina Commedia, that Dante demonstrated

In the third canto, the guide of Dante’s altar ego, Virgil, leads the duo through the vestibule just before entering the gates guarding Hell. The poet places those who are acceptable neither to Hell nor to Paradise here, emphasizing the choices these individuals made to endure eternal torture, “... Hateful to God and his enemies. // These miscreants, who never were alive, / Were naked, and were stung exceedingly / By gadflies and by hornets that were there.” (Alighieri, Inferno 3.64-66, Longfellow). It is here that Alighieri reinforces his belief than man should be God-fearing above all else, a pillar of both the time and humanist thought, but it is most notable that emphasis is placed on the lack of action taken by these individuals who lived their lives on the fence, neither worthy of “infamy [n]or praise” (Alighieri, Inferno 3.36, Longfellow). Renaissance humanism celebrates those in antiquity who have lived the best lives they possibly could, created the most beauty and spread the most knowledge, a trait that the sufferers in the vestibule are decidedly lacking, and in Dante’s eyes, this earns them perhaps the worst punishment in the first cantica. Dante’s creation of the realm of the vestibule also clearly demonstrates the work’s first major deviation from Latin theological teachings, as he felt it was entirely necessary to create a special eternal horror for the contemptible

just as Aristotle describes with his lofty erudition and gravity” (Thompson). Leonardo Bruni himself wrote of Dante’s life, and contemporaries like Cristoforo Landino spoke of the Commedia as a prime example of “the divinity of Dante’s genius” that, when faced with the poet and scholar’s sheer depth and volume of knowledge and thought, inspired great awe in them likened to being a “blind rat in such brightness” (Thompson). It must be concluded that, if Renaissance humanists so epitomizing of the spirit of that intellectual movement held Dante in such esteem, agreeing with and extolling most of what he put forth in his Commedia, the values he expresses in the epic poem must be aligned with the values of