Dantes Inferno Essay Research Paper Dante s

Dantes Inferno Essay, Research Paper

Dante s Inferno

Dante Alighieri, one of the greatest poets of the Middle Ages, was born in Florence, Italy on June 5, 1265. He was born to a middle-class Florentine family. At an early age he began to write poetry and became fascinated with lyrics. During his adolescence, Dante fell in love with a beautiful girl named Beatrice Portinari. He saw her only twice, but she provided much inspiration for his literary masterpieces. Her death at a young age left him grief-stricken. His first book, LaVita Nuova, was written about her. Sometime before 1294, Dante married Gemma Donati. They had four children.

Dante was active in the political and military life of Florence. He entered the army as a youth and held several important positions in the Florence government during the 1290’s. During his life, Florence was divided politically between Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Guelphs supported the church and liked to keep things as they were, unlike the Ghibellines. The Ghibellines were mostly supporters of the German emperor, and at the time Dante was born, they were relieved of their power. When this change took place, the Guelphs, with whom Dante’s family was associated, took power. Although born into a Guelph family, Dante became more neutral later in life realizing that the church was corrupt, believing it should only be involved in spiritual affairs.

At the turn of the century, Dante rose from city councilman to ambassador of Florence. His career ended in 1301 when the Black Guelph and their French allies seized control of the city. They took Dante’s possessions and sentenced him to be permanently banished from Florence, threatening the death penalty upon him if he returned.

Dante spent most of his time in exile writing new pieces of literature. It is believed that around 1307 he interrupted his unfinished work, Convivio, a reflection of his love poetry and philosophy of the Roman tradition, to begin The Comedy (later known as The Divine Comedy). He wrote a book called De Vulgari Eloquentia explaining his idea to combine a number of Italian dialects to create a new national language. In 1310

he writes De Monarchia presenting Dante’s case for a one-ruler world order.

Among his works, his reputation rests on his last work, The Divine Comedy. He began writing it somewhere between 1307-1314 and finished it only a short while before his death in 1321, while in exile. In this work, Dante introduces his invention of the terza rima, or three-line stanza as well as himself as a character.

The Terza rima is a verse form composed of iambic tercets (three line groupings). The rhyme scheme for this form of poetry is aba, bcb, cdc, etc. The second line of each to tercet, and then supplying the verse with a common thread, a way to link the stanzas. The only time the form changes is at the conclusion of the poem, where a single line that rhymes with the second line of the final tercet stands alone, the rhymes scene at the end of the poem looks like this: xyx yzy z.

Dante used terza rima in his Divine Comedy; there he has been noted, the three line stanza, it has been used successfully by a number of poets, including Boccaccio (Amorosa Visione), Chaucer ( Complaint to His Lady ) the and several English Renaissance poets. More recently one finds terza rima used by Lord Byron in his Prophecy of Dante and Shelly in The Triumph of Life. Some modern poets who have used the form are W.H. Auden ( The Sea and the Mirror ) and Archibald MackLeish ( Conquistador ).

An excellent example of the terza rima occurs in Percy Bysshe Shelley s Ode to the West Wind. There is a sonnet form for each of the five parts that make up the poem. Here s the first part of the poem:

0 wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou

Who chariotest to their dark wintery bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

The Inferno is the first of three parts of Dante’s epic poem, The Divine Comedy, which depicts an imaginary journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante is the hero, who loses his way in the “dark woods” and journeys to nine regions arranged around the wall of a huge funnel in nine concentric circles representing Hell. He is led by

The ghost of Virgil, the Roman poet, who has come to rescue Dante from the dark forest and lead him through the realms of the afterlife. The first circle they enter is Limbo, which consists of heathens and the unbaptized, who led decent lives. The second through the fifth circles are for the lustful, gluttonous, prodigal, and wrathful. The sixth circle is where heretics are punished. The seventh circle is devoted to the punishment of violence. The eighth is devoted to those guilty of fraud and the ninth for those who betrayed othe

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