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Dante Alighieri was born in 1265, his family was in high political standing in Florence. When he was a few years old his mom died so his father arranged for him to be married to Gemma Dontai, a family friend’s Daughter, when he was twelve. However, Dante was in love with a girl named Beatrice Porrinari, she would later become the backbone of his story, The Divine Comedy. Beatrice died unexpectedly in 1920, after this Alighieri submerged himself into philosophy and Florentine politics, later finishing a story The New Life about his first love Beatrice. Soon after this Dante found himself holding several important political positions until his until his ideas fell out of favor and he was exiled by the leaders of the Black Guelphs, the political faction in power at the time. During this exile he wrote his famous Epic poem mentioned earlier, The Divine Comedy.
Dante Alighieri
Emma and Jennifer
Question Review
1) What is Dante's greatest literary work?
2) How many cantos was the Divine Comedy written in?
3) What religious community did Dante impact the most?
4) Dante was called the father of _____?
5) Name three of the nine rings of Hell from the Divine Comedy.
Impact
Dante's impression on the world is still present today. For example in the Christian religion it gives a better physical description of hell, and gave the deadly sins punishment. Even though the epic poem is fiction, many christians describe hell in a similar way. Apart from that, Dante is called the "Father of the Italian Language" and has inspired many other writings, paintings and religious debates since his death.
Dante's Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is a vernacular poem which Dante composed during his exile. The poem is written in pentameter and follows an aba, bcb, cdc rhyming pattern (terza rima). The poem consists of over 14,000 lines.
This epic poem is divided into three cantiche, or parts, and conveys the tale of the speaker’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Each part has 33 cantos with the exception of the first part having 34 cantos.
In Hell and Purgatory Dante is guided by Virgil, a Roman poet, to Beatrice who was the muse of Dante. The poem divides Hell into nine circles with each circle presenting a kind of sin. The more inner the circle the greater the severity index. Heaven was divided into nine heavens with each sky presenting groups of people.
The Divine Comedy’s allegorical theme represents the importance of salvation and celebrates universalism. The complex literary piece features Greek mythological characters and is full of interpretations and ethics.
Dante’s masterpiece helped establish Tuscan as the literary dialect and exceeded previous Italian writers.
Works
Dante was one of the first authors that wrote poetry in vernacular Tuscan despite most works during his time being primarily published in Latin.
Dante's literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is considered to be one of the greatest works to be written in the Italian language. The epic poem was originally called Comedia but was then later renamed Divina by Giovanni.
Life
His love for Beatrice served as inspiration for many of Dante's works including La Vita Nuova, which was written after her death, and as symbol of salvation in the Divine Comedy. The Beatrice represented in Dante's works was no more than the shaping of Dante's imagination.