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Religion in renaissance and reformation
Religion in renaissance and reformation
Religion during the renaissance
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During the Middle Ages, the church was a powerful institution. It had its own government, courts, system of taxation, and laws. To live a good Christian life guaranteed access to heaven in the afterlife, and a life of sin was to be sentenced to hell. Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet, who had an admirable depth of spiritual vision and was known for his intelligence (Encarta, 1). Between the years of 1308 and 1321, Dante wrote the epic poem, 'The Divine Comedy,'; which described a journey through the afterlife. It takes place during the three days of Good Friday, when Jesus died, and on Easter Sunday when he rose body and soul to heaven. It is a moral comedy, and was written to make readers evaluate their own morals. The journey was to show readers what could happen if they live a sinful life, or if they live a godlike life. 'In the middle of the journey of our life I came to my senses in a dark forest, for I had lost the straight path. Ah! How hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and difficult wood was, which in thought renews my fear! (Alighieri, 1)'; This passage tells us that Dante is lost in the middle of the woods, and he is in the middle of his life. The reason he gives for being lost is that he had become inattentive and was not paying attention to where he was going. This symbolizes how he has lost his quest for salvation. His laziness, a sin, caused him to stray from the road of salvation. He can't go back the way he came because that is the way o...
The Inferno is a work of transition between two points, as attested by the opening lines: "When I had journeyed half of our life's way,/ I found myself within a shadowed forest,/ for I had lost the path that does not stray" (I, 1-3). Echoes of these famous lines can be heard in Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled"; whereas Frost's poem concerns itself with the duality and firmness of decision, Dante's tercet implies an interval of great indecision and limbo. Indeed, he is anything but entrenched in position: "I cannot clearly say how I had entered/ the wood; I was so full of sleep just at/ The point where I abandoned the true path" (I, 10-12). Dante is nearly sleepwalking, yet another fusion of two worlds, the conscious and unconscious. This division of self can best be explained by Dante's exile and his loss of national identity. He examines this alienated state through a geographic metaphor: "And just as he who, with exhausted breath,/ Having escaped from sea to shore, turns back/ To watch the dangerous waters he has q...
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.
Many souls have been lost following a path that they fear is taking them nowhere and they leave the path. Enlightened souls are made from those, who when they are lost, make the choice to find a correct path and continue upward. In Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (approximately 1303-1321), Dante casts himself as an ordinary, sinful, distracted wanderer, who becomes lost and afraid, and begins to search for his way out of the dark place his has found himself in. Making his story relatable to the common person, Dante grabs his fellow travelers by the hand and takes them with him on his journey through three regions of afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. His journey follows Joseph Campbell’s
Yet, Dante likens the “shadowed forest” to all he thought was wrong during his lifetime. It embodies the sins society had committed, as well as its lack of religious faith. His use of “life’s way” and “the path that does not stray” in comparison to the dark wood creates a clear dichotomy between the ignorance that comes with disbelief in God and the spiritual clarity one is provided by His love. By referring to his journey in a plural manner, Dante suggests this to be a trip shared by all individuals who wish to understand and come to terms with their sins, and eventually find peace with God.
Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings. Examining one of these cruxes of why there is a rift in the pits of hell, can lead the reader to interpret why Dante used the language he did to relate the Idea of a Just and perfect punishment by God.
Midway on his journey through life, Dante realizes he has taken the wrong path. He is lucky. Many of those on the wrong path in their own lives have started on that same path on which they will also end; Dante realizes his error and, in attempting to set himself back on the right path, he goes on an important journey. Like those who also stray from their “right” path, this poet must embark on a fantastic and terrifying journey of exploration and self discovery.
Within Canto 1, we see Dante leaving a dark forest. This forest represents all the human vices and corruption, a place similar to hell (canto 1, line 1-5, Alighieri). Dante wants to reach the hill top, where is sunny and warm, rather than be in the damp and cold forest. The hill top represents happiness and is a metaphor for heaven. But his path is stopped by three animals: a leopard (canto 1, line 25, Alighieri ) , lion (canto 1, line 36 Alighieri ) and she wolf (canto 1, line 38-41, Alighieri ). Each one represents a human weakness: the leopard is lust, the lion pride and the she wolf is avarice. They show that on the earthly plain human sin is a continual and harmful temptation. These animals try to strip him of his hope, his hope in the fact that he will some day be in heaven with God. They are temptations to lead him away and block his way to the hill top. Th...
... Moreover, such belief in human reason signifies Dante's hope towards a bright society and the pursuit of God’s love as the other part of self-reflection. In conclusion, a great deal of tension and contrast between “dark” and “light” in The Inferno helps us to explore Dante’s self portrait—he fears dangerous desires and sinful darkness, but shows much courage and hope towards life since he nevertheless follows his guide Virgil to dive into horrible Hell. As shown in Canto I, such emotional reaction to dark and light symbols lays a great foundation for developing Dante’s broad and universal traits as his journey progresses.
“Midway along the journey of our life” (Canto 1) Dante the Pilgrim says at the beginning of his journey. Through out the comedy and the Pilgrims vision of hell, I believe he was truly on a journey of self-discovery. Dante encountered a guide to help him in his journey throughout the nine circles of hell. Going deeper and deeper into hell Dante realized many different sins that he could have committed in his life and realized the things that he did not need anymore. Base on the end of his journey I believe that Dante truly found himself and found a new person within himself.
Dante, the main character and the hero of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy found himself alone in the woods he was thirty-five years old and terribly frightened. “I had become so sleepy at the moment when I first strayed, leaving the path of the trut...
Dante experiences a vision, at the age of 35, after experiencing traumatic events in his hometown of Florence. The events that are occurring in Florence at the time are associated with papal corruption and cause Dante to be forced into exile. Following the vision, which confirms to Dante that he has strayed from the right path in life, Dante begins his travel through the three realms, which contain the possible consequences following a person’s death. Dante’s journey begins on Good Friday, when he is escorted to the gates of Hell, moves to Purgatory and ends in Heaven. However, an escort accompanies him for duration of his journey. Virgil, who Dante has long admired, escorts Dante through Hell and...
Dante’s The Divine Comedy illustrates one man’s quest for the knowledge of how to avoid the repercussions of his actions in life so that he may seek salvation in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy establishes a set of moral principles that one must live by in order to reach paradise. Dante presents these principles in Inferno, where each level of Hell has people suffering for the sins they committed during their life. As Dante gets deeper into Hell, the degrees of sin get progressively worse, as do the severity of punishment.
In literature, “ [an] allusion is one form that a metaphor may take” (Ricks 1). At the time this poem was written, people believed their life on Earth was their pilgrimage to Heaven. It is necessary to consider the time period when trying to identify the allusion being made; people’s lifestyle many years ago is significantly different compared to modern day life. In the fourteenth century, a majority of people’s life journeys were dedicated to God. Their philosophy was that those who disobeyed God while alive must suffer after their death. Within the first few pages of the poem, the narrator “went astray / (…) and woke to find [himself] / alone in a dark wood” midway through his life (Alighieri 4). Dante is alone is these woods because he is without God. The Dark Woods of Error symbolize confusion of direction; Dante is lost in his life’s journey. The darkness portrays the evil which surrounds him and his environment. On the page, it explicitly says the narrator is lost and alone in the woods. The author uses an allusion here to manipulate the message; Dante’s disconnection with faith causes him confusion as to where his life is going. As Dante struggles to find his way, evil encloses
Religious, structured, and orderly. Although this book is religious through and through, it is also very earthly. You seem to never leave the earth. In fact, there seems to be no difference between earth and the heavenly sphere.
The first conflict Dante encounters in the story is person against self. Throughout the entire story Dante is trying to find a way to get on the right path. Dante opens the story by saying, “Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost.” (Canto 1.1) The dark woods symbolize sin and the right road symbolizes the path that leads to the gates of heaven and God. So when he gets lost in the dark woods that means he is lost in sin and cannot find th...