Petrarch's The Ascent Of Mont Ventoux

The two poems are almost complete opposites. In Macbeth the protagonist, Macbeth, advances to power through murder, progressively becoming more evil, or sinful, in nature. Macbeth moves progressively farther from God and moral rightness, the opposite of Dante both in character and development. Macbeth begins as an honourable man who wants to serve his King and country but eventually becomes a traitor to his benefactor which, in the terms of Inferno, would place him in the ninth circle of Hell, along with Lucifer, Brutus, Judas and Cassius. Dante begins as a man who is off the moral path and later becomes closer to God. Macbeth’s wife manipulates and pressures Macbeth into becoming the King through assassination. While in Inferno Dante progressively becomes less evil and closer to God by traveling through Hell and eventually stops pitying the souls of the damned and actually begins condemning them. His departed love, Beatrice, asks Virgil the Roman poet in the first circle of Hell to

Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice,

There are many similarities between Dante’s The Inferno and Virgil’s The Aeneid, be it their characterizations or descriptive imagery, but foremost in their ideas of what the afterlife consisted of. Each each epic hero in the works here have descended in to the depths of hell, with The Inferno depicting Dante’s descent into the depths of hell and with Virgil in Book VI of The Aeneid depicting Aeneas’s decent into hell. It can be argued that although different, the knowledge acquired by each character’s descent was equally important to accomplishing their greater tasks at the ends of their journey. Had their descent into hell been skipped their outcomes would have concluded in a different way because their voyages to Hell each played a crucial role in the advancing each narrative.

When Dante first begins in this story he was lost and clueless physically and mentally.  Dante was located in a forest with his life ruined and not knowing what was in store for him. Dante had given up on his future and had given up on finding the correct path of life for himself. However, when he sees a sunset and a very important mountain that represent Heaven he will soon change. Dante is given an opportunity to change and turn his life around but to do so he must first experience the darkness of Hell with the assistance of Virgil who helps him and guides him through what is right and wrong.

Dante is a poet who wrote an epic poem called The Divine Comedy. This epic poem is about Dante’s journey as he goes through 3 levels, which he calls Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. In the Inferno, he meets Virgil, his guide throughout his voyage. They both pass through the nine circles of Hell, where they witness many different punishments for those who have done awful things in their past. Good versus evil is a major theme that occurred throughout Hell. In the Inferno, there are times where Dante sees good and evil and also represents it himself.

The beginning of the Renaissance brought many changes to the world. It became known as the “Age of Exploration” and it brought in a new perspective on art. This perspective on art is shown through anything from visual arts to literary art. This time period also introduced the rise of humanism. It brought into the picture a very optimistic view of humanity. This was shown especially in the work The Ascent of Mont Ventoux by Francesco Petrarch. This work refers back to Book X of Confessions by Saint Augustine when Petrarch reaches the top of the mountain. Although they are both dealing with the same passage, Petrarch and Augustine seem to interpret it in very different ways.

Dante Alighieri went on a journey that was motivated by acrimony, revenge and retribution. The Divine Comedy is a story of Dante’s expedition through the afterlife with the help from a Roman poet, Virgil. In the Divine Comedy living in Hell is the same as living on earth in poverty today. Today, there are many politicians who are trying to help with the welfare of poverty, but they never follow through with their goals. Throughout Dante’s life on earth he witnesses the corruption of the church and power given to higher authorities because of their image. Many of the journeys that Dante has experienced in his journey through Hell are just like what we have experienced on earth whether you are rich or poor. However, there are significant differences between the two through symbolic signs and other non-religious meanings.

In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet.  At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see

Dante, being a devout follower of Western philosophy, had a hard time imagining paradise as non-hierarchical. For Dante, if every person in paradise were perfected equally, then nothing would set them apart. If they all had equal intellectual appetites, then they would all do the same acts, and thus be indistinguishable. This vision of paradise seems to be the same as the Eastern imagination of “nirvana,” in which individual beings are illusions which are really one whole. Staying true to his Greek philosophical roots, he devised a hierarchy based on differences in acts of caritas during life. He proposed that people have different innate potentials to love, and that these account for the differences in paradise. Dante starts with those who tried to do good acts but could not, then those who did but for less noble reasons, followed by the wise, the warriors of God, and a few other categories of acts of

Journeys can be taken many ways. Some people take the path less traveled and some people take the easy way out. Dante happens to be on journey that is less traveled, by exploring the depths of Hell in the Inferno. The epic poem’s story is about self-realization and transformation. It sees Dante over coming many things to realize he is a completely different person from the start of the Inferno journey. Dante sees many things that help him gain courage in order to prove to himself and the reader that accepting change and gaining courage can help one to grow as a person and realize their full potential. After seeing people going through certain punishment Dante realizes that he must not seek pity on himself and others in order to fully realize his true potential.

The authors’ motives for writing contrast. Dante Alighieri wrote Inferno while wandering, having been exiled from Italy. In writing Inferno as one of the three parts in the Divine Comedy, he was channeling his loss of hope and feelings of injustice in the world. He writes, “Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself/In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell/About those woods is hard—so tangled and rough/And savage that thinking of it now, I feel/the old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.” Dante wants people to see the injustices done to him in the world, feel his pain, and experience the

Dante’s Inferno is a narrative poem, with a very complicated rhyme scheme, originally written in Italian. It documents the author’s, Dante, trip through hell, where he learns how hell is organized and the way in which sinners are punished. Dante is guided by the great poet Virgil, who leads him throughout hell. The Odyssey, is an epic authored by the Greek, Homer. The epics centers on Odysseus’ protracted journey home. The protagonist, Odysseus, visits the underworld for a very short amount of time. The two literary works contain many common elements, such as characters being punished, the protagonists interacting with those in the underworld, repeating characters, and the misery of the underworlds. There are also differences

Dante however proves himself to be a hypocrite and often reflects his own sins and hubris in his work. His guide throughout hell, and later purgatory, is none other than Virgil, one of history’s finest and most accomplished epic poets. In the very first circle of hell, Limbo, he places himself among the other great epic poets: “He is Homer, sovereign poet, next comes Horace the satirist, Ovid is third, the last is Lucan. ‘Since each is joined to me in the name the one voice uttered, they do me honor and doing so, do well.’ There I saw assembled the fair school of the lord of loftiest song, soaring like an eagle far above the rest. After they conversed a while, they turned to me with signs of greeting, and my master smiled at this. And then they showed me greater honor still, for they made me one of their company, so I became the sixth amidst such wisdom.”-Divine Comedy, Dante’s Inferno, Canto IV, lines 88-102.

Dante’s Inferno begins in a dark forest, a place of confusion, because he lost his way on the “true path”. Seeking an escape, Dante finds a hill where the sun glares down on him. This light seen in Dante’s Inferno symbolizes clarity as the sun represents God. After encountering three beasts and turning back to the murky forest, Dante crosses paths with the great Roman Poet, Virgil. Virgil is an aid and guide to Dante to Heaven, the ultimate Paradise. He warns Dante he must pass through Hell and Purgatory in order to reach his salvation in heaven. Virgil is depicted as nature or human reason perfected by virtue. It is strongly emphasized that Virgil can only take Dante so far in his journey by guiding him to heaven. Much like St. Thomas Aquinas’ reasoning, nature or human reason can only bring you so far in the journey to God. As Virgil and Dante approach the mouth of Hell, Virgil preaches to Dante about a woman in Heaven who took pity upon Dante when he was lost in hell. The woman Virgil speaks of is Dante’s departed love Beatrice. After Dante hears that Beatrice is heaven he now sheds the fear of traveling through Hell and Purgatorio.

Dante and Virgil have some similar views on different subjects.. The major contrast between the two is dependent on their religion and beliefs. Virgil separates and acknowledges the the good and the evil, but he doesn’t set any boundaries between the two. However, Dante believes that the two should be separate, concluding sinners belong in Hell, and the good belong separate from the bad souls. Anyone who doesn’t believe in God, is automatically considered a sinner and is forced to go to Hell. Virgil and his society have no religious preconception, and as a result he believes that your view on God doesn’t decide your fate. He also disagrees that someone should be placed in categories in Hell based on their sin. He believes that everyone in life, has committed a sinful act. Dante’s society is far more unforgiving. If anyone has sinned in their life and have no felt remorse or sorrow for their actions,