Dante The Divine Comedy

Dante's Life

Born in Florence in 1265; died in

Ravenna in 1321
Met Beatrice circa 1274
Married Gemma Donati in 1289
Elected Prior (highest magistrate, a
2 month post) in 1300
Exiled from Florence in 1302

Literary Works

De Vulgari Eloquentia, on the origin and

development of language
De Monarchia, on political theory
Convivio, unfinished, a compendium of
knowledge
Vita Nuova, lyric poems and commentary
Commedia , dubbed The Divine Comedy in
the 16th century, written from 1307-21.
Relates a symbolic pilgrimage through Hell,
Purgatory, & Heaven undertaken by the
fictitious pilgrim Dante beginning the
evening before Good Friday, 1300.

DANTE AND The Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri (12651321)
La Divina
Commedia (The
Divine Comedy)
Trilogy: Inferno,
Purgatorio, Paradiso
Written in the late
Middle Ages, c.
1307 -1321
Dantes home in Florence

Background
Dante wrote The Divine Comedy
while in exile due to his involvement
with a political party that criticized
the corruption of the pope. Dante
believed that an emperor should
govern affairs of the state while the
popes power should be confined to
religious affairs.

Literary Influences

Old & New

Testament

Homers Odyssey,
and especially
Virgil's Aeneid

St. Augustine's
Confessions

Contents

The Divine Comedy is an account of

Dante's own journey through the
afterlife (hell, purgatory, and paradise)
He is guided by the Roman poet Virgil
(1st c. BC) and later by Beatrice
The journey inspired by and directed
toward Beatrice, the earthly love of
Dante's youth
A journey toward salvation

Structure in Multiple Layers of Three to

Symbolize the Trinity:

Three Guides:
1. Virgil, symbol of human reason & poetry, through
Inferno & Purgatorio
2. Beatrice, his pure human love, through most of
Paradiso
3. St. Bernard de Clairvaux, a 12th century contemplative
monk
Written in vernacular Italian in terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc,
etc.)
33 cantos in each canticle (Inferno, Purgatorio, and
Paradiso), plus one in the beginning as an introduction =
100.
Nine circles of Hell + anteroom = 10; seven levels of
purgatory plus three ante-terraces = 10; nine heavenly
spheres + empyrean = 10.
Three beasts block his path: Leopard, Lion, and She-Wolf.

Characters
"Peopled" by
hundreds of
historical,
contemporaneous,
and mythical
figures who had
died by the year
1300, but who may
have lived
centuries before.

Virgil

Time
The action of the poem begins on
Good Friday of the year 1300, at
which time Dante, who was born in
1265, had reached the middle of the
Scriptural threescore years and ten.
It ends on the first Sunday after
Easter, making in all ten days.

Dante's historical world as hell:

civil and international warfare

political struggles
corrupt popes seeking power and wealth
sale of ecclesiastical offices (simony) and of
salvation (indulgences)
world of intolerance and persecution
(Inquisition founded 1231)
religion is abused, and manipulated; greed,
pride and violence disguised as holiness
prevalence of ignorance, superstition, and fear

DANTE'S CRITICISM OF HIS WORLD

exposure of the evils of his world

challenging of Church dogmas, exposing superstitions

creation of a new Humanist philosophy radically reinterpreting Christianity

giving Christianity a human and earthly meaning

centered around the idea of love

demanding the substance of true Christianity in

Christian life: love, peace, humility, forgiveness,
giving, caring about others, healing the sick, feeding
the hungry

Dantes Journey Begins in Hell

Concept of contrapasso (sin =

punishment), sinning is hell
Hell is the state of sin; harming others
creates a world that is literally hellish
for the sinner himself and for others
We are responsible not only for our own
actions, but for the effects they have
on others; we are responsible not only
for our own salvation, but for the good
of society.

THE INFERNO

Hell is a place on earth

Most notable: the popes in hell (Nicholas III,
Boniface VIII, Clement V); the keys of Saint
Peter opening the gates of understanding of
the new symbolism created by Dante
Representation of hell in earthly, sensory,
familiar terms, populated by oneself and
those one knows
The presence of the living human being in
hell

The Nine Circles of Hell

1. Limbo
2. The Lustful
3. The Gluttonous
4. The Avaricious and the Prodigal
5. The Wrathful and the Sullen
6. Heretics
7. The Violent
8. The Fraudulent
9. The Treacherous

Map of the Inferno

Inferno
Circle 1
The Virtuous Pagans
Circle 2
The Lascivious/Lustful
Circle 3
The Gluttonous
Circle 4
The Miserly and the Wasteful against
kindred, country
Circle 5
The Wathful guests, lords, etc.
Circle 6
The Heretics
Circle 7
The Violent
Circle 8
The Fraudulent
Circle 9
The Lake of the Treacherous

Images of Dantes Hell

Boticellis Image of Dantes Hell

Bartolomeos Vision of Dantes Hell

Canto I
Dante enters hell while alive:
Canto I.1 "in the middle of the
road of our life
Dante enters hell driven by his
own sins (symbolized by the
lion, the wolf, and the leopard)
A lion: Pride or ambition.

A she-wolf: Avarice
A leopard: Fraudulence
Here he confronts the lion.
Illustration by Gustave Dor

Canto 1

The dark forest of human life, with its

passions, vices, and perplexities of all
kinds; politically the state of Florence with
its fractions Guelf and Ghibelline.
Dante as pro-Ghibelline and Imperialist is
in opposition to the Guelfs, Papal Party:
Boniface VIII., and the King of France,
Philip the Fair, and is banished from
Florence, out of the sunshine, and into the
dark.

Canto 4: The Unbaptized

Dante is borne across the

river Acheron in his sleep, and
awakes on the brink of the sad
valley of the abyss.

He now enters the First

Circle of the Inferno; the Limbo
of the Unbaptized and those
born before Christianity.

Here he finds the

Philosophers (Aristotle, Plato),
classical writers and Avicenna
and Averroes.

Illustration by Gustave Dor

Canto 5: The Lustful

Paolo and Francesca

Francesca, daughter of
Guido da Polenta, Lord of
Ravenna, and wife of
Gianciotto Malatesta, son
of the Lord of Rimini. The
lover, Paul Malatesta, was
the brother of the
husband, who, discovering
their love, put them both
to death with his own
hand. They are condemned
to be whirled around in a
violent wind.

Illustration by Gustave Dor

Paolo and Francesca

By J.A. Ingres

By Amos Cassioli

Canto 10: Farinata

Farinata degli Uberti was
the valiant and renowned
leader of the Ghibellines
in Florence. He believed
like Epicurus, that the soul
dies with the body, and
that human happiness
consisted in temporal
pleasures; and for this sin
he is damned as a Heretic
as is Cavalcante, a
Guelph.
Farinata addresses Dante
llustration by Gustave Dor

Farinata (cont)
Farinata led the Ghibellines at the
famous battle of Monte Aperto in
1260, where the Guelfs were routed,
and driven out of Florence. He died in
1264.
Guelphs- Papal Party
Ghibellines- Imperial Party

The Ninth Circle

Symbolic of the ultimate coldheartedness, lack of feeling for others

Dante feels half-dead as he experiences
the cold blast of Lucifer's beating wings
then Dante kicks heads, pulls hair, and
abuses the souls embedded in the ice
Dante promises Fra Alberigo to clear
the ice from his eyes if he reveals his
identity, then goes back on his promise

Gravest danger as he becomes treacherous

in circle of treachery

Dante ensnared in his own sins and

contradictions
at this point Dante is effectively entrapped
in hell, his heart frozen, his actions
identical with those of the treacherous at
the bottom of hell
the only way for him to get out: recognizing
the sin in himself, seeing the absurdity of
his self-righteousness, forgiving and
accepting what he hates the most
only way out: to look into the spiritual
mirror, to embrace the body of Satan

The Ninth Circle of Hell: the frozen, circular lake of ice at the
bottom of hell and the home of Satan

Lucifer, King of Hell

Illustrated by Gustave Dor

Satan

Description of Satan
Satan has three headsred, black, and yellowand
from his six eyes streams continuous tears. In
each of its mouths, Satan gnaws on the worst of
the traitors: Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. Virgil
abruptly tells Dante that they must leave. Virgil
pulls his pupil onto his back and begins to climb
down Satans hairy body. Virgil continues to climb
until they come to a point where Satans legs stand
upright in a dark cave. Virgil explains that when
they climbed down Satans side, they passed the
center of the center of the earth so that they now
stand just below the Southern Hemisphere. Satan
stands where he was planted when he originally
fell from Heaven. Dante quickly scrambles to climb
back to Earth and as he does he sees stars above
him for the first time since his journey began.

Dante-Satan

embrace as symbol of forgiveness of sin, need to

sympathize with the suffering (the tears) of the
greatest sinner
introspection and self-recognition: need to look
into the center of the mirror-like surface of the
frozen lake; what Dante sees there is just himself
Dante = Satan
that insight and his capacity to forgive set him
free
implication of the impossibility of escaping hell
while his soul is tainted with anger, hate,
vengefulness, and self-righteousness

Purgatory

Purgatori
o

Purgatorio
Seven circles for
the seven deadly
sins: pride, envy,
anger, sloth,
avarice, gluttony
and incontinence.

Second illustrated ed.

Brescia, 1487

Paradiso

The Paradiso is a place

of reward.
It is structured on the
Seven Cardinal Virtues:
Faith, Hope, Love,
Prudence, Justice,
Fortitude, Temperance.
Each virtue is
rewarded in one of the
spheres that were
thought to surround
the earth.

Canto 33 Paradiso

The Visible
Presence

In this new light of

God's grace, the
mystery of the
union of the Divine
and human nature
in Christ is
revealed to Dante.

Canto 33 Paradiso
Dante looks up into the light and receives a glorious
vision of which he feels the emotion of the experience
but he cannot recall the details of the encounter.
He invokes God to help him recall the scene so that
he can tell the world about it.
Dante reveals that he saw within the Eternal Light:
three circles of different colors reflecting each other.

Canto 33 Paradiso

Dante sees a vision of Christ. The three

orbs of triple hue reveals the mystery of
the Trinity in human nature in the Being of
God, the Son mirroring the Father and the
Love of the Holy Spirit between them both.

In the last lines, Dante moves in harmony

with the spheres, with God, and with
himself, impelled by divine love.

Paradiso

Paradiso

Florentine Mss 15th century

Paradiso XVII

Dantes Exegetical Method: From Dantes

Letter to Can Grande selection taken from the Geoffrey
Chaucer
Page then, what we have to say,
To
elucidate,

be it known that the sense of this work is

not simple, but on the contrary it may be
called polysemous, that is to say, 'of
more senses than one'; for it is one sense
which we get through the letter, and
another which we get through the thing
the letter signifies; and the first is called
literal, but the second allegorical or
mystic.

And this mode of treatment, for its better

manifestation, may be considered in this verse:
'When lsrael came out of Egypt, and the house of
Jacob from a people of strange speech, Judaea
became his sanctification, Israel his power.'
For if we inspect the letter alone the departure
of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time
of Moses is presented to us; if the allegory, our
redemption wrought by Christ; if the moral
sense, the conversion of the soul from the grief
and misery of sin to the state of grace is
presented to us; if the anagogical, the
departure of the holy soul from the slavery of
this corruption to the liberty of eternal glory is
presented to us. Cont next page..}

When we understand this we see clearly that

the subject round which the alternative
senses play must be twofold. And we must
therefore consider the subject of this work as
literally understood, and then its subject as
allegorically intended. The subject of the
whole work, then, taken in the literal sense
only, is 'the state of souls after death,'
without qualification, for the whole progress
of the work hinges on it and about it.
Whereas if the work be taken allegorically
the subject is 'man, as by good or ill
desserts, in the exercise of the freedom of
his choice, he becomes liable to rewarding or
punishing justice.
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/dante/cangrand.htm
l
based on From The Latin Works of Dante, Temple Classics, London, 1904,
Epistola X, pp. 346-52.

Summary: a modification and adaptation of the

traditional four-fold method of interpretation of
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274):

LITERAL -- the everyday meaning

MORAL -- educational lessons
ALLEGORICAL -- abstract, intellectual,
conceptual symbols
ANAGOGICAL -- the deepest
mysteries of the afterlife