Dante

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Dantes Divine Comedy
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Introduction to Dante

• Dante Aligheri (1265-1321), of Florence, Italy.
• One of the 5 greatest poets of the Western
  tradition (with Homer, Virgil, Milton, Goethe).
• His masterpiece (The Divine Comedy) embodies the
  Thomistic synthesis of Greek philosophy the
  Biblical worldview.

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Introduction to Dante

• His great love seems to have been Beatrice
  Portinari.
• They met when they were children.
• Dante worshipped her.
• Beatrice was Dantes inspiration for The Divine
  Comedy.
• After her death in 1290, he dedicated a book of
  verse, La Vita Nuova, or The New Life, to her.
• Though each married, they did not marry each
  other.

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Introduction to Dante

• Dante entered an arranged marriage in 1291 with
  Gemma Donati, a noblewoman.
• They had four childrenJacopo, Pietro, Giovanni,
  and Antonia.
• Records contain little else about their life
  together.

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Political Climate

• Church (Pope) vs. State (Holy Roman Emperor)
• After the collapse of the Roman Empire, there
  were attempts to recreate the Holy Roman
  Empire.
• Conflicts between various Popes and emperors
  continued for hundreds of years.
• In Dantes time, both the Pope and the emperor
  claimed political authority
• Dante wanted to separate the two forms of
  authority and have the church deal only with
  spiritual matters while the empire dealt with
  earthly ones.

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Dantes Banishment

• In Florence, Italy, there were two political
  parties
• The Guelphs supported the Pope
• The Ghibellines supported the Emperor
• Due to opposing local, papal, national, and
  political politics, the Guelphs split into two
  subparties Blacks and Whites
• Pope Boniface VIII sided with the Blacks Whites
  were then persecuted.
• Dante (a White Guelph) was banished from Florence
  and never returned. He wrote The Divine Comedy
  after he was banished.

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The Divine Comedy

• Written between 1308 and 1321
• Begins on Good Friday in the year 1300
• An imaginary journey that takes Dante through
  Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise

• An allegorythe journey is symbolic of the
  spiritual quest for salvation
• Three parts The Inferno, Pergatorio, and
  Paradisio

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Comedy

• Although it may not seem "funny" to us, The
  Divine Comedy is classified as a comedy because
  it has a happy ending. It is divine because
  it deals with heaven, hell, and God divinity.
• This was the old definition of comedy, as opposed
  to our current notion that a comedy should keep
  us laughing.

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Vernacular

• Dantes use of the local (Tuscan) dialect of
  Italian rather than Latin in writing The Divine
  Comedy was a daring gamble at the time most
  serious writing was done in Latin because the
  vernacular languages kept changing and people
  were afraid that no one would be able to read
  them in a few years.

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Retribution in Hell

• Punishments in the tours of hell consists of
  those based on the principle of Eye for an eye
• Punishment equal to the crime

Example Fortunetellers pretend to know future,
so in hell, their heads are fastened on backwards
so they must always look behind themselves.
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Circles

• The sinners in the circles include
• Circle OneThose in limbo (basically innocent
  people unbaptized and unbelievers)
• Circle TwoThe lustful
• Circle ThreeThe gluttonous (food, drink, other
  addictions)
• Circle FourThe hoarders (greed as sin)
• Circle FiveThe wrathful

12
Circles

• Circle SixThe heretics
• Circle SevenThe violent
• Ring 1 Violence Against Others
• Ring 2 Violence Against Self
• Ring 3 Violence against God, Nature, and Art

13
Circles

• Circle Eight the fraudulent.
• Has 10 levels
• Seducers
• Flatterers
• Simonists (buy/sell pardons)
• Fortune tellers
• Barrators (frivolous lawsuits)
• Hypocrites
• Thieves
• Fraudulent counselors
• Sowers of discord
• Falsifiers

14
Circles

• Circle NineTraitors
• Region 1 Traitors to their kindred
• Region 2 Traitors to their country
• Region 3 Traitors to their guests
• Region 4 Traitors to their lords/benefactors

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Themes to Consider

• Love as the source of both good and evil.
• The paradox of free will
• The relationship between body and soul.
• Faith and Reason and the limits of each

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Love as the source of Good and Evil

• Virgil distinguishes between animal-like love and
  mind-directed love.
• The second is imperfect both in respect of its
  object and its intensity.
• Wrong object Pride, Envy, Wrath
• Too weak Sloth
• Too strong Avarice, Gluttony, Lust

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The Paradox of Free Will

• If God is omnipotent (all-knowing) and knows what
  we will do before he created us, how can we have
  free will?

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The Paradox of Evil

• Paradox If God is good and omnipotent, why
  does He allow evil in the world?
• Dante maintains that God allows evil because of
  free will. Man is to have free will, the ability
  to choose, and without good and evil, man has
  nothing to choose between.

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Relationship between Body Soul

• For medieval Christians, the soul was separated
  from the body at death and then judged based on
  the life it lived in the body while on earth.
• Vision literature describes life after death in
  terms of other worlds, heaven and hell for
  medieval Christians. 

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Faith Reason

• Dante gives a high status to natural reason.
• Virgil, Dantes guide through hell and purgatory,
  was a pre-Christian Roman poet.
• The philosophers and poets (ones who rely
  entirely on reason) are in limbo, because they
  were born before Christ, or were not baptized.
  They are treated with great respect, and suffer
  only the sadness of the loss of heaven.

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Three Medieval Theories

• Dante endorses creationism that each
  individual human soul is specially created by
  God.
• Augustine and others endorsed traducianism the
  human soul is formed by natural powers possessed
  by the sperm egg.
• Dante clearly rejects Averroism that all human
  beings share a single soul.

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Allegory

• A method of expressing ideas by using a parallel
  story or images
• Examples Dante wandering in the woods in the
  midpoint of his life the situation is an
  allegory for his personal confusion and lack of
  direction, his mid-life spiritual crisis
• The leopard, wolf and lion are allegorical
  beasts each represents a sin which keeps Dante
  from getting to heaven.

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The Divine Comedy as an Epic

• A long, narrative poem
• Reflects universal themes
• Life and Death
• Good and evil
• Faith and Reason (represented by Beatrice and
  Virgil)
• Plot is complicated by supernatural beings/events
  and involves long and dangerous journeys through
  foreign lands.
• Vast scale (includes heaven, hell, and earth)