Dante Essay Research Paper Dante

Dante Essay, Research Paper

Dante’s poem relating his heavenly ordained journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise enjoyed immediate success: more than 600 surviving manuscripts of the Divine Comedy produced during the 14th century attest to the work’s popularity. Consequently, Dante’s vernacular classic was among the first books to be printed when the new technology of moveable type was introduced into Italy from Germany during the 1460s and 1470s. Publishers and printers repeatedly turned to Dante for his proven marketability throughout the Renaissance. The editorial history of Dante’s poem thus presents in concentrated form a history of the early modern book trade: that is, of the ways in which editions of the literary classics were prepared, produced, marketed and sold between the late 15th and early 17th centuries. This exhibition presents a panoramic perspective on the material history of the early modern printed book including a wide variety of book sizes, page designs, typography and iconographical programs. The Renaissance editorial history of the Divine Comedy vividly illustrates how the literary classic became an object of commercial exchange, subject to market forces in the age of print. The editorial history of the Divine Comedy also reflects the critical reception of the poem during the Renaissance. The traditional competition between “Dante the theologian” and “Dante the poet” finds expression in the ongoing editorial rivalry between oversized editions overflowing with scholarly commentary and elegant portable volumes without commentary designed to appeal to both courtly and bourgeois readers of Dante, the vernacular poet. Most importantly, however, Dante’s poem plays a central role in the Renaissance creation of a national Italian linguistic and literary identity. The establishment of an authoritative text of the Divine Comedy, and generally speaking, questions surrounding Dante’s language, were the focus of a controversy between Florence and other Italian centers about the appropriate linguistic and rhetorical model for Italian literature. The process by which the Florentine Dante’s poem came to be canonized as an “Italian” classic roughly parallels the process by which the Florentine vernacular came to be adopted as the literary language throughout the peninsula, thus reducing the regional languages of Italy to dialect status. Finally however, the history of the critical reception of Dante’s poem during the Renaissance is also a story about the poem’s decline in popularity. The prophetic claims and religious fervor of the Divine Comedy, no less than the poem’s unorthodox language and style, were incompatible with the neo-classicism of Renaissance literary culture, which preferred the lyric poetry of Petrarch. Dante in fact assumes a marginalized (albeit classic) status with respect to Petrarch in the Italian tradition at this time. As the Renaissance advanced and matured into Mannerism and the Baroque, the distance between “modern” cultural and literary sensibilities and the “medieval” poet grew larger. Significantly, only three editions of the Divine Comedy appeared during the 17th century. Indeed, Dante will not return to the fore until the 19th and 20th centuries, and only then will the Divine Comedy finally achieve its now familiar status as a classic of world literature. Early Years Dante was born in Florence between late May and early June 1265, into a family of the lower nobility. His mother died in his childhood, his father when Dante was 18 years old. The most significant event of his youth, according to his own account, was his meeting in 1274 with Beatrice, the woman whom he loved, and whom he exalted, first in La vita nuova (The New Life) and later in his greatest work La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy). Scholars have identified Beatrice with the Florentine noblewoman Beatrice Portinari.Little is known about Dante’s education, although his works reveal an erudition that encompassed nearly all the learning of his age. He was greatly influenced by the works of the Florentine philosopher and rhetorician Brunetto Latini, who appears as an important figure in The Divine Comedy. Dante is known to have been in Bologna about 1285, and he may have studied at the university there. During the political struggles that occurred in Italy at this time he initially supported the faction known as the Guelphs against the party known as the Ghibellines (see Guelphs and Ghibellines). In 1289 he was with the Guelph army of Florence at the Battle of Campaldino, in which the Florentines triumphed decisively over the Ghibelline armies of Pisa and Arezzo. About this time he married Gemma Donati, a member of a prominent Florentine Guelph family.La Vita Nuova Dante’s first important literary work, La vita nuova, was written not long after the death of Beatrice. It is composed of sonnets and canzoni woven together with a prose commentary. The work narrates the course of Dante’s love for Beatrice, his premonition of her death in a dream, her actual death, and his ultimate resolve to write a work that would be a worthy monument to her memory. La vita nuova clearly exhibits the influence of the love poetry of the Proven al troubadours and represents the finest work of the dolce stil nuovo (”sweet new style”) of contemporary Florentine vernacular poetry. It transcends the Proven al tradition in that it not only describes the poet’s love in terms of a lofty idealism but suggests a