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
Dante’s 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 pope’s power should be confined
to religious affairs.
Literary Influences


Old & New
Testament
Homer’s 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 SheWolf.
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
Dante’s 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 Dante’s Hell
Boticelli’s Image of Dante’s Hell
Bartolomeo’s Vision of Dante’s 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 Doré
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 Doré
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 Doré
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 Doré
Farinata (con’t)
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 cold-heartedness,
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 selfrighteousness, 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 Doré
Satan
Description of Satan
Satan has three heads—red, black, and yellow—and 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 Satan’s hairy body. Virgil
continues to climb until they come to a point where
Satan’s legs stand upright in a dark cave. Virgil explains
that when they climbed down Satan’s 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 selfrighteousness
Purgatory
Purgatorio
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
Dante’s Exegetical Method: From Dante’s
Letter to Can Grande selection taken from the Geoffrey
Chaucer Page
“To elucidate, then, what we have to say, 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. Con’t 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.html
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