Dante And His Inferno Essays - Divine Comedy, Afterlife, Italy

Dante And His Inferno Dante And His Inferno Dante Alighieri, one of the greatest poets of the Middle Ages, was born in Florence, Italy, supposedly around May 29, 1265, to a middle-class Florentine family. A year later, on Easter Sunday, he was baptized, later describing this as his first step toward salvation. At an early age, he began to write poetry and became fascinated with lyrics. In 1274, during his adolescence, Dante fell in love with a beautiful girl named Beatrice Portinari. This love of his, though, was in truth simply a lust issue, as they had not actually met more than twice. Unfortunately for Dante, his father passed away in 1283, leaving him yearning for fatherly affection which he later displays in The Divine Comedy: Inferno, as he seems to look toward Virgil for parental affection. During the late 1280's, he served in the military as a cavalryman in the battles of Compagna and Campaldino against the Ghibellines. Shortly after his return in 1290, his beloved Beatrice passed away, leaving him grief-stricken, but still provided much inspiration for his literary works. His first book, Vita Nuova (New Life), was written about her. Sometime before 1294, Dante married Gemma Donati, whom he later had four children with, named Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni, and Antonia. Dante was active in the political and military life of Florence. He entered the army as a youth and held several important positions in the Florentine government during the 1290's. During his life, Florence was divided politically between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. The Guelfs supported the church and liked to keep things as they were. The Ghibellines, however, were mostly supporters of the German emperor, and were in power up until the time of Dante's birth. When this took place, the Guelfs, for whom Dante's family was associated, took power. Although born into a Guelf family, Dante became more neutral later in life after realizing that the church was corrupt, believing it should only be involved in spiritual affairs. He joined the Physicians and Apothecaries Guild and soon became a fairly important politician. At the turn of the century, Dante rose from city Councilman to Ambassador of Florence. At this time, the Guelfs had split into two factions, the Black and White Guelfs. T he Black Guelfs supported Pope Boniface VIII and his quest to seize Florence's province; the White Guelfs, however, did not support the Pope. Dante tried to show his neutrality for the groups by exiling the leaders of both factions, which included his brother-in-law and his best friend. Finally in 1302, while Dante was away serving an ambassadorship in the town of Siena, the Black Guelfs and their French allies took over the city. They confiscated Dante's possessions and sentenced him to banishment from Florence, threatening the death penalty upon him if he returned. Dante first traveled to Verona, spending most of his time in exile writing new pieces of literature. Afterwards, he traveled as far as Paris and Oxford before settling in Ravenna in 1319. It is believed that around 1307 he interrupted his unfinished work, Convivio, a reflection of his love poetry philosophy of the Roman tradition, to begin The Divine Comedy. He also wrote a book called De Vulgari Eloquentia, which explained the origins and types of human language and devices of poetry, in addition to his idea to combine a number of Italian dialects to create a new national language. In 1310, he wrote De Monarchia presenting Dante's case for a one-ruler world order. In 1321, Dante was sent by the lord of Ravenna as an ambassador to Venice to settle arguments over trade regulations, and upon his return to Ravenna, he fell sick with Malaria and died on September 13, 1321. Among his works, The Divine Comedy is the most famous and reputable. He began writing it around 1307 and finished it only a short while before his death. In this work, Dante introduced his invention of the terza rima, or three-line stanza, as well as himself as a character. The Inferno is the first of three parts of Dante's epic poem, The Divine Comedy, which depicts an imaginary journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante is the hero, who loses his way in the