Political and Religious Motivations in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedia

There will always be philosophical interpretations that will create universal truths for many generations to come. In addition, these literary works enriches the audiences’ understanding of these texts as supremely important cultural and historical documents, for audiences who embrace their universal truths. Both generational audiences’ spiritual interpretations seemed to have, collectively, developed a text of extraordinary literary works that are overflowing with philosophical and truth-seeking richness.

While love is not frequently mentioned in the poem the Inferno, it always has a presence on the back of the reader’s mind. The most surprising appearance of love comes at the gates of hell. This is where Dante learns that this place of punishment has been created from “Primal Love”. Dante displayed hell as being birthed from “the primal love”, or the Holy Spirit. Though those who do not believe the justice of eternal punishment are all less inclined to regard it as a byproduct of God’s love. In this essay I will reveal how hell is the result of God’s loving character, and how it was indeed created from love.

In St. Augustine’s Confessions and Dante’s Inferno, the central characters in their respective narratives are presented a message from which induces distinct reactions. More importantly, their reactions are reflections of their perspective concerning the Christian outlook

"What is fame? Fame is but a slow decay  Even this shall pass away."  Theodore Tilton     The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, is a poem laden with such Christian themes as love, the search for happiness, and the desire to see God. Among these Christian themes, however, is Dante's obsession with and desire for fame, which seems to be a surprising departure from conventional medieval Christian morality. Indeed, as the poem progresses, a striking contradiction emerges. Dante the writer, in keeping with Christian doctrine, presents the desire for fame and glory among the souls of Inferno in order to replace it with humility among the souls of Purgatorio. Yet this purification of desire is not entirely embraced by Dante,

     Dante's Inferno, itself one piece of a literary trilogy, repeatedly deploys the leitmotif of the number three as a metaphor for ambiguity, compromise, and transition. A work in terza rima that details a descent through Nine Circles of Hell, The Inferno encompasses temporal, literary, and political bridges and chasms that link Dante's inspired Centaur work between the autobiographical and the fictive, the mundane and the divine and, from a contemporary viewpoint, the Medieval and the Modern‹Dante's recognition of the Renaissance as our millennium's metamorphic period and of himself as its poetic forerunner (until deposition by Shakespeare).

A subtopic worth further exploration within The Inferno is the depiction and representation of women. The Inferno mentions very few women throughout, and that makes it all the more salient to analyze the presence of these feminine characters for the fact that they are female carries more weight within the context of the poem than what they say alone. Dante lived in an era when women did not occupy influential roles in the public realm, and were actually discouraged from engaging in intellectual or philosophical debate. Women were not allowed to take part in political discourse nor communicate through the medium of poetry. For the exclusion of women from the historical and literary western canon, Dante’s perception of women in The Divine Comedy can be seen as an underlying framework for further discussion about the consideration of women. What makes Dante’s dialogue even more germane is his use of women from both pagan and Christian epochs, endowed with key virtues of salvation, but closely linked to secular goals (Glenn, xiii-xiv).

recognized as his greatest literature accomplishment not only for the multitude of themes and literature firsts, but also for the beauty of his writing style.

The theme of equilibrium between reason and faith is one of the core messages of Inferno and it is essential in conveying the main idea of the Divine Comedy and of the pilgrim’s journey that the exploitation of intellect and the misuse of will is the cause of sin, and that through faith, those who are morally lost find their salvation in God. In Inferno Dante makes it clear that he greatly values knowledge and reason in a way that is more characteristic to the Renaissance rather than of his own Medieval time. However, throughout this first book, the author reminds the audience of the Christian nature of his poem as he uses the stories of the sinners he encounters to stress the idea that without faith, the intellect is not sufficient to achieve divine salvation and that the misuse of reason can often lead to terrible sins.

The beginning lines of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri indicate a pragmatic journey through the dark woods. It is soon evident that The Divine Comedy is in terms of an allegory. Midway through his life, Dante finds himself lost and in darkness. He is confused and unaware of how he has ended up in these dark woods. Dante soon comes across Italian poet Virgil, who will guide him through the Nine Circles of Hell. Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy: Inferno portrays Dante’s life and adventure through Hell which allegorically represents a much broader subject: man’s journey through life to salvation.

While St. Thomas Aquinas established himself as the New Aristotle of the 13th century, Dante Alighieri established himself the new Virgil. The two men made an immense impact in their respective fields (poetry and philosophy). Yet surprisingly, the two share common ideals. In each of their respective literary and philosophical views, they establish the importance of the relationship between nature and grace. In Dante’s Inferno the unique relationship of grace and nature is made apparent and reflects the writings of Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica”. Dante’s pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise exhibit and reflect St. Thomas’ understanding of the relationship of nature and grace. Dante

In The Inferno, Dante descends through the nine circles of Hell, encountering increasingly serious sins, most of which are crimes. The levels of Hell can be interpreted as a gradation of crimes, with penalties in proportion to their relative gravity of sin. While crimes are transgressions against human law, Dante’s Christian orthodox ambitions translate the treatment of these seemingly earthly crimes as sins, transgressions against divine law. For the purposes of this paper, the two terms can be used interchangeably because Dante’s perception of crimes on Earth is in parallel to the punishment of those crimes as sins in Hell. For Dante, the most punishable sins are those of betrayal. With a lucid examination of Dante’s political

Dante had his fair share of the real human experience, whilst traveling through hell in Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy”. Characters in literature have been popularized since this masterpiece to favor sins as a type of personality trope. The lazy bum, the angry husband, or the prideful peacocks; the list goes on and on. The cause and effect of these traits have served well to teach generations of readers, the ideas and meanings of our actions as humans. Although it is rare, some works leave open ended plots for us to contemplate the meaning of said sin. In conjunction to some of the deadly sins, the main characters from “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Veldt”, and “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”, all display a truth about human nature.

Often when we set out to journey in ourselves, we come to places that surprise us with their strangeness. Expecting to see what is straightforward and acceptable, we suddenly run across the exceptions. Just as we as self‹examiners might encounter our inner demons, so does Dante the writer as he sets out to walk through his Inferno. Dante explains his universe - in terms physical, political, and spiritual - in the Divine Comedy. He also gives his readers a glimpse into his own perception of what constitutes sin. By portraying characters in specific ways, Dante the writer can shape what Dante the pilgrim feels about each sinner. Also, the reader can look deeper in the text and examine the

Dante's `Divine Comedy', the account of his journey through hell, purgatory and heaven is one of the worlds great poems, and a prime example of a most splendidly realized integration of life with art. More than being merely great poetry, or a chronicle of contemporary events, which it also is, the `Comedy' is a study of human nature by a man quite experienced with it. The main argument I will make in this essay is that Dante's `Comedy' is chiefly a work of historical significance because in it lies the essence of human life across all boundaries of time and place. I feel that such a reading is justified, nay invited, by Dante himself when he says;

The Divine Comedy is much more than an epic poem depicting a man’s interpretation of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. Written by Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, the Divine Comedy frequently alludes to the political turmoil that was prevalent throughout 14th century Italy, specifically, the city of Florence. During this period of Italian history, there was a lack of a stable government and a power struggle between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor. This paper will analyze the political aspects within the Divine Comedy and its connection to religion, focusing specifically on the Inferno.