Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri
1265-1321

The Divine Comedy

Critics Say:

• One of the indisputably great works of world literature. 
• Both structurally and thematically it is organized with the precision and harmony of the great philosophical systems and the vast Gothic cathedrals of its time
• Celebrates with unqualified enthusiasm, the central doctrines of medieval Christianity
• Celebrates the achievement of the classical world –Virgil as mentor, many references to Greek and Roman mythology
• Demonstrates that a great piece of literature can be created in the vernacular language

Dante

• falls in love with a very young Beatrice
• both marry others;  she dies young
• she remains the love of his life- symbol of female perfection
• he felt that his love for her led him from a merely human to a transcendental love
• Caught up in political conflicts between city states, exiled from Florence.
• Some critics argue that The Divine Comedy is about exile – about the soul’s journey home

Why Virgil was his mentor

• Dante admired Caesar Augustus, who created the pax romana which was the necessary precondition (in Dante’s view) for the coming of Christ – everything has a purpose, is ordained.  Since Virgil was the prophet and celebrant of this empire, he was, although he could not know it, inspired in writing the Aeneid not by Jupiter but by the Christian God.

• One of Virgil’s early poems, “The Fourth Eclogue” seems to anticipate the birth of Christ:

“Now comes the last age prophesied by the song of the Cumaean Sybil;  the great order of the ages is born anew;  now the virgin returns, now the reign of Saturn comes again, now a new child is sent down from heaven above.”

• Stylistically, Virgil also showed Dante that poetry can be a vehicle for moral and philosophical truth

Dante’s Style in the Divine Comedy

Medieval definition of a comedy

• Narrative structure: tragedy beings in happiness, ends in misery, a              

comedy the reverse

• Style:  tragedy is serious, formal; comedy can have a range of styles
• Character:  tragedy deals with important historical characters; comedy can

                include commoners

• Subject Matter:  tragedy deals with events of great significance; comedy

     with every day events

Allegory:  a story with a symbolic level of meaning

• Medieval writers and poets loved allegory – represented their belief that God’s purpose could be discovered in every action
•  Here Dante represents the human soul progressing in its knowledge and understanding of God’s love

           
“Il olce stil nuovo” – the sweet new style
wrote in the ordinary language of the people,
perfected techniques of versification
celebrated women as the symbol of perfection

Unity and order everywhere. 

• Three parts to The Divine Comedy:  embodies the Holy Trinity
• 34, 33, 33 cantos in each canticle 
• Written in terza rima (three line rhyme).  ). 
• 9 circles In Hell;  9 terraces in Purgatory
• In Hell, the lost souls are arranged in three main groups, occupy nine circles
• Each canticle ends with stars (visible signs of God’s oversight

Ethical Pattern

• The natural inclination of every human being is love, a movement to something outside the self.
• The natural and proper object of love is God. 
• Sin occurs when love is directed to the wrong object. 
• All three places organized according to degree of misplacing or realizing love of God (1830)

Autobiographical and Philosophical

• Dante’s love for Beatrice helps him overcome his own spiritual crisis
• Love for her leads him on his allegorical quest towards God and the reaffirmation of his faith

• In order to know God, he has to experience Hell (The Inferno), Pergatory and Paradise.
• Virgil, his mentor, represents the best of human reason, can only lead him so far
• All levels contain concrete examples of degrees of sinners and saints from Dante’s own times, from mythology, from history
• Dante uses his framework to criticize abuses within the government, the church and personal enemies. 

Purpose of the Divine Comedy
To assist in the spiritual development of the reader, to teach a moral and spiritual lesson about “right” behavior, and the consequences of “wrong” behavior

The Inferno

• Hell is a huge funnel extending into the center of the earh
• One’s punishment in hell is not merely appropriate to the crime, but is the crime.
•  In the Inferno every sinner commits his sin forever, for all of eternity:  and it is this endless act of sinning that is the punishment.

Examples of sins punished in Hell:  the lower in hell, the worse the sin

Date of journey:  Good Friday, 1300- trip through Hell follows Christ’s descent to Hell on Good Friday and his rising on Easter Sunday morning

Dante tries to climb Mount Purgatory, but faces the sins that prevent man from reaching salvation:  pride, envy, greed, represented by 3 beasts:  the leopard, the lion and the wolf

Virgil appears, sent by Mary through Beatrice, to rescue Dante

• Limbo, the pagan paradise (canto 4); 
• Carnal Love (canto 5) Francesca and Paolo , now blown by the wind; 
• gluttons, now eating mud and excrement (canto 6)
• greed and wastefulness (canto 7);
• heretics (canto 9-10), now buried in flaming tombs; 
• suicides, now turned into dead trees (13); 
• simonists clergy who sold their divine offices for money (canto 19) now buried upside down in flaming tombs;   
• political grafters , who sold political office for money (canto 21), now enmired in boiling pitch with demons poking their heads down
• hypocrites (canto 23) in monastic cloaks and hoods of lead, brilliantly decorated on the surface
• thieves (canto 24) particularly popes
• betrayers of their family, their country, their guests;  buried in ice in the ninth circle (canto 32-33)
• canto 34:  Satan, buried in ice - bat-like wings with three mouths:  red face of hate, right face of impotence, left face of ignorance – tortured traitors hang from the mouths:  Judas- betrayed Jesus;  Brutus and Cassius betrayed Julius Caesar,