Aligheri Dante

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Aligheri Dante

• (1265-1321)

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Historical Context

• Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence,
  Italy, to a family of moderate wealth that had a
  history of involvement in the complex Florentine
  political scene.
• Around 1285, Dante married a woman chosen for him
  by his family, although he remained in love with
  another womanBeatrice, whose true historical
  identity remains a mysteryand continued to yearn
  for her after her sudden death in 1290.
• Three years later, he published Vita Nuova (The
  New Life), which describes his tragic love for
  Beatrice.

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• Around the time of Beatrices death, Dante began
  a serious study of philosophy and intensified his
  political involvement in Florence. He held a
  number of significant public offices at a time of
  great political unrest in Italy, and, in 1302, he
  was exiled for life by the leaders of the Black
  Guelphs, the political faction in power at the
  time.
• All of Dantes work on The Comedy (later called
  The Divine Comedy, and consisting of three books
  Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso) was done after
  his exile.
• In Northern Italy's political struggle between
  Guelphs and Ghibellines, Dante was part of the
  Guelphs, who in general favored the Papacy over
  the Holy Roman Emperor.

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• Florence's Guelphs split into factions around
  1300 the White Guelphs, who opposed secular rule
  by Pope Boniface VIII and who wished to preserve
  Florence's independence, and the Black Guelphs,
  who favored the Pope's control of Florence.
• Dante was among the White Guelphs who were exiled
  in 1302 by the Lord-Mayor Cante de' Gabrielli di
  Gubbio, after troops under Charles of Valois
  entered the city, at the request of Boniface and
  in alliance with the Blacks.
• The Pope said if he had returned he would be
  burned at the stake.

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• This exile, which lasted the rest of Dante's
  life, shows its influence in many parts of the
  Comedy, from prophecies of Dante's exile to
  Dante's views of politics to the eternal
  damnation of some of his opponents.
• He completed Inferno, which depicts an
  allegorical journey through Hell, around 1314.

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• Dante roamed from court to court in Italy,
  writing and occasionally lecturing, until his
  death from a sudden illness in 1321
• His wife meanwhile maintained his home and family
  back in his beloved Florence.

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The Big Questions

• What is man?
• Why does he act as he does? 
• What is Good and what is Evil? 
• When it so often looks like "Good guys finish
  last," why should anyone be good?

• The whole world, ultimately, has meaning, reason,
  and order.
• The source of the meaning, reason, and order is
  God's Divine Plan.
• The Divine Order is both knowable and achievable.
  

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The Construction of the Cathedral

• The Divine Comedy is composed of over 14,000
  lines that are divided into three (3) canticas
  (Ital. pl. cantiche) Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio
  (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise) each
  consisting of 33 cantos (Ital. pl. canti).
• An initial canto serves as an introduction to the
  poem and is generally not considered to be part
  of the first cantica, bringing the total number
  of cantos to 100. The number 3 is prominent in
  the work, represented here by the length of each
  cantica.

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• The verse scheme used, terza rima, is
  hendecasyllabic (lines of eleven syllables), with
  the lines composing tercets according to the
  rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded,
• .

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Albert Ritter sketched the Comedy's geography
from Dante's Cantos Hell's entrance is near
Florence with the circles descending to Earth's
centre sketch 5 reflects Canto 34's inversion as
Dante passes down, and thereby up to Mount
Purgatory's shores in the southern hemisphere,
where he passes to the first sphere of Heaven at
the top
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• The poem is written in the first person, and
  tells of Dante's journey through the three realms
  of the dead, lasting during the Easter Triduum in
  the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides
  him through Hell and Purgatory Beatrice, Dante's
  ideal woman, guides him through Heaven. Beatrice
  was a Florentine woman whom he had met in
  childhood and admired from afar in the mode of
  the then-fashionable courtly love tradition which
  is highlighted in Dante's earlier work La Vita
  Nuova.
• In Hell and Purgatory, Dante shares in the sin
  and the penitence respectively. The last word in
  each of the three parts of the Divine Comedy is
  "stars."

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Bartokomeo c. 1420
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Sandro Botticelli
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Barry Moser - c. 1980
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Major themes

• The Perfection of Gods Justice
• Dante creates an imaginative correspondence
  between a souls sin on Earth and the punishment
  he or she receives in Hell. The Sullen choke on
  mud, the Wrathful attack one another, the
  Gluttonous are forced to eat excrement, and so
  on. This simple idea provides many of Infernos
  moments of spectacular imagery and symbolic
  power, but also serves to illuminate one of
  Dantes major themes the perfection of Gods
  justice. The inscription over the gates of Hell
  in Canto III explicitly states that God was moved
  to create Hell by justice (III.7). Hell exists to
  punish sin, and the suitability of Hells
  specific punishments testify to the divine
  perfection that all sin violates.

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• Evil as the Contradiction of Gods Will
• In many ways, Dantes Inferno can be seen as a
  kind of imaginative taxonomy of human evil, the
  various types of which Dante classifies,
  isolates, explores, and judges. At times we may
  question its organizing principle, wondering why,
  for example, a sin punished in the Eighth Circle
  of Hell, such as accepting a bribe, should be
  considered worse than a sin punished in the Sixth
  Circle of Hell, such as murder. To understand
  this organization, one must realize that Dantes
  narration follows strict doctrinal Christian
  values. His moral system prioritizes not human
  happiness or harmony on Earth but rather Gods
  will in Heaven. Dante thus considers violence
  less evil than fraud of these two sins, fraud
  constitutes the greater opposition to Gods will.
  

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• Storytelling as a Way to Achieve Immortality
• Dante places much emphasis in his poem on the
  notion of immortality through storytelling,
  everlasting life through legend and literary
  legacy. Several shades ask the character Dante to
  recall their names and stories on Earth upon his
  return. They hope, perhaps, that the retelling of
  their stories will allow them to live in peoples
  memories.
• Yet, in retelling the sinners stories, the poet
  Dante may be acting less in consideration of the
  sinners immortality than of his own.

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Sites Cited

• Divine Comedy. Wikipedia. 1 Dec. 2008
  http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy
• Gardner, Patrick and Brian Phillips. SparkNote on
  Inferno. 29 Nov. 2007 http//www.sparknotes.com/po
  etry/inferno/
• The World of Dante. Institute for Advanced
  Technologies in the Humanities http//www.worldofd
  ante.org/