The Divine Comedy

Three

Divisions
1.Inferno
2.Purgatorio
3.Paradiso

Language and Style

Low

Style: Bawdy language/slang;

grotesque imagery.
High Style: Elevated language. Poetic.
Academic Language: Latin
Vernacular: Italian
Dante Used: Italian, Vernacular
Use of Language follows journey: Low to
High.
14th Century Slang: Dantes use of slang
was shocking to his audiences.
Polarity of Language: Shows the various
possibilities of language

THE INFLUENCE OF
ARISTOTLE

Influence of Aristotle
During

the Middle Ages, Aristotle was the one

classical philosopher that the Europeans kept
studying
His focus on precision, categorizing, and detail
became the hallmarks of scholarship during the
Middle Ages
Everything has a place
Each detail builds on the next

The

Great Chain of Being

Idea formed during the Middle Ages, influenced by

Aristotelian logic
Everything is connected, like links in a chain, from the
lowliest element to God sitting on the throne of Heaven;
every creation has its place and they are all ordered from
worst to best

Aristotles Definition of Tragedy

A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious
and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in
appropriate and pleasurable language; in a
dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents
arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a
catharsis of these emotions.

Aristotles

argument is that
a tragedy was a work in
elevated language that
started happily and ended in
horror.

The Alighieri family was considered

noble, although by Dantes time his
family was reduced to modest
economic and social circumstances.
According to Dante himself, the family
descended from the noble seed of the
Roman founders of the city. (Inferno
XV.73-78)

The
Meeting
of Dante
with
Beatrice
by Henry
Holiday

At the age of 9, Dante met eight-year-old Beatrice Portinari,

who eventually became a major influence in his life and
writings. Beatrice married another man and died when Dante
was 25, so their relationship existed almost entirely in Dante's
mind, but she nonetheless plays an extremely important role
in his poetry.

Dante's
Dream
(1871)
Dante
Gabriel
Rossetti
(1828 - 82)

Rossetti had a life-long interest in the Italian poet Dante.

This painting shows an episode from the Vita Nuova. In
it, Dante dreams that he is led by Love to the death-bed of
Beatrice Portinari, his life-long love. The model for
Beatrice was Jane Morris, with whom Rossetti had a longterm affair.

After Beatrices
death, Dante
married Gemma
Donati, had three
children, and was
active (1295-1300)
as a councilman,
and elector of
Florence.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Dante was active in politics during the
early part of his life and took an active
interest in church reform.
Like most of the citys lesser nobility
and artisans, Dantes family was
affiliated with the Guelf party, as
opposed to the Ghibellines who came
from the feudal aristocracy.
These two parties came into Italy from
Germany.

During this time, Renaissance Florence was thriving, but it

was not a peaceful city.
The Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were political
rivals for much of this time period; the Guelfs were in
favor of the Pope, while the Ghibellines supported
Imperial power.
By 1289, the Ghibellines had disappeared from Florence.
There was no peace, however. The Guelf party divided
between the Whites and the Blacks. Dante was a White
Guelf.

The Whites were opposed to Papal power

than the Blacks, and tended to favor the
emperor. Dante rose to a position of
leadership among the White Guelfs.
In 1302, while he was in Rome on a
diplomatic mission, the Blacks in Florence
seized power. The Blacks exiled Dante, seizing
all his goods and condemning him to be
burned if he ever returned to Florence.

Dante passed from court to

court, writing passionate
political and moral letters
and finishing his Divine
Comedy, which contains the
Inferno, Purgatorio, and
Paradiso. He finally died in
1321.

Dante

wandered throughout Italy.

He

maintained his opinion that the Papacy

and the Empire had two distinctly different
purposes.

Years in exile

In Dantes historical period, there was no linguistic unity in

Italy.
This means that different dialects were spoken in different
parts of the country (vernacular), although they all were
derived from Latin language.
He was one of the first authors to write in the vernacular
Tuscan, rather than Latin, and thus had a defining effect on
what Italian is today.
Before his work, Italian was usually only spoken, and hence
was divided into many different dialects, without a coherent
literary language.
Modern Italian is derived fairly directly from this dialect.

The Divine Comedy

Spanning several years,
the epic-like poem The
Divine Comedy was
written from 1306 to
1321.
The poem presents an
overview of the attitudes,
beliefs, philosophies, as
well as the material
aspects of the medieval
world.
Because of these
elements, The Divine
Comedy has become
universally known as one
of the greatest poems in
world literature.

Dantes purpose for writing The Divine Comedy was

expressed in a famous letter to his Veronan benefactor,
Can Grande della Scala, where he said, "it is an attempt
to remove those living in this life from the state of misery
and lead them to the state of felicity."
Moreover, Dante describes his work as having both literal
and allegorical meaning.
In a literal sense, the subject of the poem, according to
Dante, is "the state of souls after death."
In allegorical terms, the poem is about humankind, who
by exercising free will, will bring "rewarding or punishing
justice" upon themselves.

The poem is divided into three sections - - the Inferno, the

Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, with the Inferno being the most
widely read and studied section of The Divine Comedy.
In this segment of the poem, Dante describes a journey
through Hell from the entrance at the lowest and less harsh
level. His companion for the travel is Virgil, a mentor and
protector.
Constructed as a huge funnel with nine descending circular
ledges, Dantes Hell is a meticulously organized torture
chamber in which sinners are carefully categorized according
to the nature of their sins.

The Divine Comedy

Through

the process
of spiritual
regeneration and
purification, Dante
prepares himself to
meet God in
Paradiso.
Through Paradise,
Dante is guided by
Beatrice, for whom
the poem is a
memorial.

Dante attributed all the

heavenly virtues to
Beatrices soul and
imagined, in his
masterpiece The Divine
Comedy, that she was
his guardian angel who
alternately berated
and encouraged him on
his search for
salvation.
The Death of Beatrice by D. G. Rossetti, Tate Gallery,
London.

In the Inferno, Dante starts on ground level and works his way
downward; he goes all the way through the earth and Hell and ends
up at the base of the mountain of Purgatory on the other side.
On the top of Purgatory there is the terrestrial paradise (the garden
of Eden), and after that he works his way through the celestial
spheres.
The Divine Comedy is the narrative of Dante's journey towards
redemption.

The work is
written in terza
rima, a complex
verse form in
pentameter, with
interlocking triads
rhyming aba, bcb,
cdc, etc.

Nel mezzo del cammin di

nostra vita mi ritrovai per una
selva oscura
ch la diritta
via era smarrita.
Ahi quanto a dir qual era
cosa dura esta selva
selvaggia e aspra e forte che
nel pensier rinova la paura!
Tant' amara che poco pi
morte; ma per trattar del ben
ch'i' vi trovai, dir de l'altre
cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

The Divine Comedy

Literal:

a vision of a mans journey

through Hell
Allegorical: describes a Christian soul
traveling through a state of sin in search
of redemption and blissfulness
Moral: describes what awaits sinful souls
and encourages the living to seek
salvation

Interpretations of Inferno

Dante's nine circles of hell

oLimbo, which includes people waiting to see if they enter heaven or
descend to hell.
oLustful, Gluttonous, Avaricious. These three circles represent sins
of weakness. They are mostly harmful things that we do to ourselves.
oWrathful, Heretics (those who betrayed others), and Violent. These
three circles represent sins of malice. They were premeditated and
usually involved actions toward other people.
oThe Fraudulent and the Treacherous. These last two circles
represent sins of betrayal and pride, considered the worst sins of all.
Satan, who betrayed God, represents the epitome of evil.

La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy) by Dante

Alighieri is in no way a comedic literary work. The only
term that relates to the poem is "divine."
Yet, it is suggested that Dante himself simply called this
work "Comedy."
This terms holds relevance to the poem when one
understands that the poem is a optimistic process from
Hell toward Heaven, or from worse to better. This was
the basic medieval conception of comedy.
The terms "divine" was added later, probably by
Boccacio when he continually referred to Dante as a
"divine poet."

Dantes Impact
Little is known about the
details of Dante's life other
than what he tells us in his
works. The portrait emerges
of a bitter and passionate
man who used prophetic
poetry to warn Florentines
of the evils which awaited
them for their misdeeds and
the confusion and
corruption of their
government.

Bibliography

The Death of Beatrice by D. G. Rossetti, Tate Gallery, London.

Digital Dante, Institute for Learning Technologies, Copyright

1992-97, Last Modified November, 1997.

Norton, Charles Eliot, Inferno/Hell, Blackmask Online, 2002,

http://www.blackmask.com, accessed 14 April 2004.