Dante Alighieri Essay Research Paper Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri Essay, Research Paper

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, La Vita 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, were relieved of their power. When this change took place, the Guelphs for 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.

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 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 heathen 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 others. In the last section, Satan remains imprisoned in a frozen lake.

The journey is difficult and full of revelations, disappointment and questions, but they persevere. The end of their journey leads Dante and Virgil to the bottom of Hell. Lucifer is seen in all his ugliness and they are drawn towards Heaven. They emerge to the surface, rising above the ugliness of sin and journey towards their goal as they catch

sight of the stars shining in the heavens. Their journey begins on Good Friday and they emerge from Hell on the day of Resurrection, Easter Sunday on the underside of the world, in the hemisphere of water at the foot of Mount Purgatory.

Dante’s vision expresses his personal experience, through images to convey his interpretation of the nature of human existence. He writes in the first person so the reader can identify and deeply understand the truths he wished to share about the meaning of life and man’s relationship with the Creator.

Dante is remembered as a great thinker and one of the most learned writers of all time. Many scholars consider his epic poem The Divine Comedy consisting of “Inferno”, “Paradiso”, and “Purgatorio”, among the finest works of all literature. Critics have praised it not only as magnificent poetry, but also for its wisdom and scholarly learning.

Dante was a man who lived, who saw political and artistic success, and who was in love. He was also a man who was defeated, who felt danger and the humiliation of exile, and who was no stranger to the cruelty and treachery possible in people. Dante felt he was a victim of a grave injustice. He also suffered serious self-doubts, natural for a

man in exile. His works reflect his experiences and attempts to answer some of life’s difficult questions.

In 1968, Allen Tate, a conservative thinker and a convert to Catholicism, wrote “The Unilateral Imagination; or, I too Dislike it”, in his Essays of Four Decades. This critique was established from a lecture given by Tate in 1955 based on his works.

An example of Dante’s ability to tell so much in one single word was expressed by Tate when he cited the word “ombre” which translates “shades,” to remind us of the continuity of the Christian Hell and Virgil’s pagan Hades. “Shades” are referred to as three-dimensional bodies, able to feel pain as if they were alive in solid ice and

immobile, yet to have the intensity of fire. If Dante had tried to touch one of them, h

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