The Divine Comedy

1698 Words4 Pages

Throughout the Middle Ages, art and philosophy has been lost in darkness, but with the reintroduction of ideas that came with the Renaissance in Italy, brought about a literary revival. One of the writers that influenced this revival is Dante Alighieri, a 13th century poet from Florence, Italy. His world famous epic, La Commedia, or more commonly known as The Divine Comedy remains a poetic masterpiece depicting truth and sin. The Divine Comedy, through the journey into the three hells, expresses a universal truth of good versus evil. Alighieri’s life of heartbreak with the influences of other famous poets like Homer and Virgil has affected his writing style, and through reviews by literary experts and their interpretation of Alighieri’s unique use of motifs, The Divine Comedy can be broken down to a epic that expresses a global message of human life.
I.
To understand The Divine Comedy and its impact, an understanding of Dante Alighieri’s life of tragic love and civil war can assist in unraveling the truth on Dante’s philosophical epic. Alighieri’s grief of a lost love and his involvement in a civil war led to his philosophical masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, influenced by classical writers like Homer and Virgil, using a distinct style and use of language that reflect Alighieri’s early life and philosophical involvement.
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy in 1265 into a noble family. As a young boy, Alighieri’s mother passed away and by the age of nine, he was put into an arranged marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati although still in love with another girl, Beatrice. On Beatrice’s sudden young death, Alighieri dedicated the Vita Nuova or New Life, a collection of lyrical poems expressing his love for her ...

... middle of paper ...

...ert P. "Dante: The Most Vivid Version." The New York Review of Books. 24 Oct.
2013. .
Hollander, Robert. "Biography of Dante Alighieri." Princeton Dante Project. Princeton
University. Web. .
Lummus, David. "Dante's Inferno: Critical Reception and Influence." Stanford University.
.
Reynolds, Matthew. "Jamming up the Flax Machine." London Review of Books. Web.
.
Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Dante Alighieri." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter
2011 Edition. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Stanford University.
.

Show More
Related

  • Courtly Love In Dante's Paradiso

    1220 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dante, an Italian poet during the late middle ages, successfully parallels courtly love with Platonic love in both the La Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy. Though following the common characteristics of a courtly love, Dante attempts to promote love by elevating it through the lenses of difference levels. Through his love affair with Beatrice, although Beatrice has died, he remains his love and prompts a state of godly love in Paradiso. Dante, aiming to promote the most ideal type of love, criticizes common lust while praises the godly love by comparing his state of mind before and after Beatrice’s death. PJ Klemp essay “Layers of love in Dante’s Vita Nuova” explains the origins of Dante’s love in Plato and Aristotle themes that designate

    Read More

  • Effects Of Gluttony In Dante's Inferno

    534 Words  | 2 Pages

    In circle three of Inferno, Dante conjures a despairing tone by use of vivid imagery and extensive detail to display the harrowing effects of gluttony. This is best exemplified through the weather patterns and general landscape of this circle, the Poets’ encounter with Cerberus, and Dante’s conversation with Ciacco, the Hog. These devices also allow for the conveying of ideas embedded within the text.

    Read More

  • Dante's Divine Comedy - Close Reading of Canto V of the Inferno

    917 Words  | 2 Pages

    Alghieri, Dante. "The Divine Comedy: Inferno." The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces: Expanded Edition In One Volume. Gen. Ed. Maynard Mack. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997. 1032-1036.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy

    202 Words  | 1 Pages

    Dante was born during the time that Florence Italy were having political issue. One of the issue were that people supported the pope and the other side supported the Roman Empire. It created two factions called the Guelph’s and the Ghibellines. I was war between them. When the Guelph took over Italy created another fractions between the White Guelph and Black Guelph. Dante is part of the White Guelph

    Read More

  • The Role and Function of the Major Monsters in Dante’s Inferno

    1944 Words  | 4 Pages

    Moreover, Dante, the narrator of the Inferno, has succeeded in not only telling the frightening story of the Inferno, but also pointing out the importance of the relationship between human’s sins and God’s retribution, using the monsters as the symbols for each kind of sin and its punishment throughout the progress of the story, which teaches his readers to be well aware of their sins through the literature – a part of humanities; the disciplines that teach a man to be a human.

    Read More

  • Dante's Relationship In Dante And His Guide Virgil

    716 Words  | 2 Pages

    Thesis- Dante and Virgil have an interesting relationship that changes throughout Dante’s Inferno. They started off very different and Virgil didn’t care much for Dante. Dante looked at Virgil differently after he had heard Beatrice sent him to guide him. Throughout their travels, their relationship changed as they went through every layer of hell. Something happened in each one that changed their relationship either drastically, or barely at all. Their travels are very intriguing and their relationship is very complex. They become very close, so much that Dante acquires a deep trust in Virgil. They are no longer “just friends.” They are both poets and can communicate very well through words and Literature.

    Read More

  • The Allegory of the Cave and Dante

    1237 Words  | 3 Pages

    “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.” This maxim applies to the poet Dante Alighieri, writer of The Inferno in the 1300s, because it asserts the need to establish oneself as a contributor to society. Indeed, Dante’s work contributes much to Renaissance Italy as his work is the first of its scope and size to be written in the vernacular. Due to its readability and availability, The Inferno is a nationalistic symbol. With this widespread availability also comes a certain social responsibility; even though Dante’s audience would have been familiar with the religious dogma, he assumes the didactic role of illustrating his own version of Christian justice and emphasizes the need for a personal understanding of divine wisdom and contrapasso, the idea of the perfect punishment for the crime. Dante acts as both author and narrator, completing a physical and spiritual journey into the underworld with Virgil as his guide and mentor. The journey from darkness into light is an allegory full of symbolism, much like that of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which shows a philosopher’s journey towards truth. Therefore, Dante would also agree with the maxim, “Wise men learn by others’ harms; fools scarcely by their own,” because on the road to gaining knowledge and spiritual enlightenment, characters who learn valuable lessons from the misfortunes of others strengthen their own paradigms. Nonetheless, the only true way to gain knowledge is to experience it first hand. Dante’s character finds truth by way of his own personal quest.

    Read More

  • Divine Comedy - The Trinity in Dante's Inferno

    2095 Words  | 5 Pages

    What is most fascinating is the degree to which one of the more stable metaphors, that of past, present, and future, has come true. The Inferno repeatedly invokes past epics, especially Virgil's Aeneid, with such cries as "O Muses, o high genius, help me now," and Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan welcome Dante and Virgil into Limbo. Now many modern poets, most notably T.S. Eliot, alluded quite frequently to Dante's work. It seems that The Inferno will forever be canonically in the Terza Rimaoriginally written as a centerpiece to the Italian epic, now accepted as a framer of world literature. WORKS CITED:.

    Read More

  • Divine Grace and Justice in Dante's Inferno

    1539 Words  | 4 Pages

    Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Notes Allen Mandelbaum and Gabriel Marruzzo. New York: Bantam Books, 1980

    Read More

  • Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy

    1145 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is said to be the single greatest epic poem of all time. The opening story of the character of Dante the Pilgrim is told in the first of the three divisions: The Inferno. The Inferno is a description of Dante’s journey down through Hell and of the several degrees of suffering and many mythical creatures that he encounters on the way. Throughout his travel Dante displays many different feelings and actions but the emotion that summarizes the entire poem is fear. While some of his character traits change as his mind matures and acknowledges the justice being carried out, from the very beginning until the final Canto, his fear does not subside. This does well to reinforce the symbolism of Dante as Everyman and serves to direct the reader to the moral purpose of Divine Comedy, because of the humility and dependence upon God that fear produces. In the first Canto, which serves as an introduction to the entire comedy, Dante encounters the three beasts which impede his progress out of the dark woods. Coming upon the She-Wolf he writes: "This last beast brought my spirit down so low / with fear that seized me at the sight of her, / lost all hope of going up the hill" (I.52-54). Dante is so shaken by the appearances of the three beasts that he rushes headlong into the dark woods he has just come out of. This is only the first obstacle Dante encounters, but it proves an insurmountable one.

    Read More

  • Divine Love In Dante's Inferno

    1273 Words  | 3 Pages

    Inferno is the first and most famous of a three part series by Dante Alighieri known as the Divine Comedy that describes his journey to God through the levels of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise written in the early fourteenth century. Scholars spanning over nearly seven centuries have praised its beauty and complexity, unmatched by any other medieval poem. Patrick Hunt’s review, “On the Inferno,” states, “Dante’s extensive use of symbolism and prolific use of allegory— even in incredible anatomical detail—have been often plumbed as scholars have explored the gamut of his work’s classical, biblical, historical, and contemporary political significance” (9). In the story, each of the three main characters, Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice, represent

    Read More

  • The Weakness of Human Nature in Dante's Inferno

    2210 Words  | 5 Pages

    Alighieri, Dante. "The Inferno." The Divine Comedy. Trans. John Ciardi. New York: First New American Library Printing, 2003.

    Read More

  • Virgil's Purpose in the Divine Comedy

    1745 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...Commedia"" Dante Studies With the Annual Report of the Dante Society.90 (1972): 1-11. JSTOR. Web. 08 May 2014. .

    Read More

  • The Vaule of Personal Development in The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri

    1223 Words  | 3 Pages

    Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy, Inferno. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.

    Read More

  • The Divine Comedy vs. Paradise Lost

    3039 Words  | 7 Pages

    The Divine Comedy, written in the 14th century by Dante Alighieri, is a heroic epic. Throughout Dante’s literary work, he outlines his scientific understandings of the world, his political views and provides the reader with a moral compass and spiritual map of which to follow. This poem is written in three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradisio, each of which is broken down into individual cantos. Inferno includes 34 cantos, whereas Purgatrio and Paradiso each contain 33 cantos, however, the first canto of Inferno is really an introduction to the poem.

    Read More

More about The Divine Comedy

Open Document