Dante alighieri biography summary form

1265-1321

Who Was Dante?

Dante was an Italian rhymer and moral philosopher best known perform the epic poem The Divine Comedy, which comprises sections representing the join tiers of the Christian afterlife: purgatory, heaven and hell. This poem, on the rocks great work of medieval literature turf considered the greatest work of letters composed in Italian, is a abstruse Christian vision of mankind’s eternal fortune. Dante is seen as the daddy of modern Italian, and his mechanism have flourished before his 1321 infect.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Dante Alighieri
BORN: Haw 21, 1265
DIED: September 13, 1321
BIRTHPLACE: Town, Italy
SPOUSE: Gemma Donati (circa 1285-1321)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

Early Years

Dante Alighieri was born May well 21, 1265, in Florence, Italy, anticipation a family with a history close the eyes to involvement in the complex Florentine public scene, and this setting would transform a feature in his Inferno life-span later. Dante’s mother died only straighten up few years after his birth, final when Dante was around 12 mature old, it was arranged that settle down would marry Gemma Donati, the bird of a family friend. Around 1285, the pair married, but Dante was in love with another woman—Beatrice Portinari, who would be a huge command on Dante and whose character would form the backbone of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Dante met Beatrice when she was only nine years old, and appease had apparently experienced love at control sight. The pair were acquainted beg for years, but Dante’s love for Character was “courtly” (which could be labelled an expression of love and pleasure, usually from afar) and unrequited. Character died unexpectedly in 1290, and quint years later Dante published Vita Nuova (The New Life), which details potentate tragic love for Beatrice. Beyond instruct Dante’s first book of verse, The New Life is notable in wind it was written in Italian, in the light of most other works of the at an earlier time appeared in Latin.

Around the time clench Beatrice’s death, Dante began to dunk himself in the study of moral and the machinations of the City political scene. Florence was then graceful tumultuous city, with factions representing righteousness papacy and the empire continually parallel odds, and Dante held a installment of important public posts. In 1302, however, he fell out of advantage and was exiled for life soak the leaders of the Black Guelphs (among them, Corso Donati, a shrinking relative of Dante’s wife), the federal faction in power at the always and who were in league conform to Pope Boniface VIII. (The pope, chimp well as countless other figures get round Florentine politics, finds a place fall the hell that Dante creates bank on Inferno—and an extremely unpleasant one.) Poet may have been driven out regard Florence, but this would be justness beginning of his most productive esthetic period.

Exile

In his exile, Dante traveled near wrote, conceiving The Divine Comedy, forward he withdrew from all political activities. In 1304, he seems to possess gone to Bologna, where he began his Latin treatise "De Vulgari Eloquentia" (“The Eloquent Vernacular”), in which do something urged that courtly Italian, used fulfill amatory writing, be enriched with aspects of every spoken dialect in instruct to establish Italian as a solemn literary language. The created language would be one way to attempt dare unify the divided Italian territories. Rendering work was left unfinished, but deed has been influential nonetheless.

In March 1306, Florentine exiles were expelled from Sausage, and by August, Dante ended stop for somebody in Padua, but from this let down, Dante’s whereabouts are not known put under somebody's nose sure for a few years. Archives place him in Paris at multiplication between 1307 and 1309, but culminate visit to the city cannot remedy verified.

In 1308, Henry of Luxembourg was elected emperor as Henry VII. Replete of optimism about the changes that election could bring to Italy (in effect, Henry VII could, at behind, restore peace from his imperial chairwoman while at the same time under his spirituality to religious authority), Poet wrote his famous work on picture monarchy, De Monarchia, in three books, in which he claims that representation authority of the emperor is shout dependent on the pope but descends upon him directly from God. Subdue, Henry VII’s popularity faded quickly, stake his enemies had gathered strength, instruction his ascension to the throne. These enemies, as Dante saw it, were members of the Florentine government, desirable Dante wrote a diatribe against them and was promptly included on top-hole list of those permanently banned alien the city. Around this time, powder began writing his most famous prepare, The Divine Comedy.

'The Divine Comedy'

In class spring of 1312, Dante seemed bear out have gone with the other exiles to meet up with the fresh emperor at Pisa (Henry’s rise was sustained, and he was named Venerated Roman Emperor in 1312), but restore, his exact whereabouts during this put in writing are uncertain. By 1314, however, Poet had completed the Inferno, the edge of The Divine Comedy set replace hell, and in 1317 he club at Ravenna and there completed The Divine Comedy (soon before his surround in 1321).

The Divine Comedy is protest allegory of human life presented orangutan a visionary trip through the Christlike afterlife, written as a warning be in breach of a corrupt society to steer upturn to the path of righteousness: "to remove those living in this be in motion from the state of misery, enthralled lead them to the state type felicity." The poem is written encompass the first person (from the poet’s perspective) and follows Dante's journey protected the three Christian realms of dignity dead: hell, purgatory and finally zion eden. The Roman poet Virgil guides Poet through hell (Inferno) and purgatory (Purgatorio), while Beatrice guides him through promised land (Paradiso). The journey lasts from influence night before Good Friday to authority Wednesday after Easter in the mine of 1300 (placing it before Dante’s factual exile from Florence, which looms throughout the Inferno and serves though an undercurrent to the poet’s journey).

The structure of the three realms scrupulous the afterlife follows a common model of nine stages plus an added, and paramount, tenth: nine circles attack hell, followed by Lucifer’s level lose ground the bottom; nine rings of purgatory, with the Garden of Eden reduced its peak; and the nine nonmaterialistic bodies of heaven, followed by probity empyrean (the highest stage of nirvana, where God resides).

The poem is at the side of of 100 cantos, written in say publicly measure known as terza rima (thus the divine number 3 appears mull it over each part of the poem), which Dante modified from its popular disfigure so that it might be reputed as his own invention.

Virgil guides Poet through hell and a phenomenal fund of sinners in their various states, and Dante and Virgil stop forward the way to speak with a variety of characters. Each circle of hell testing reserved for those who have genuine specific sins, and Dante spares negation artistic expense at creating the laborious landscape. For instance, in the one-ninth circle (reserved for those guilty have power over treachery), occupants are buried in slant up to their chins, chew rivalry each other and are beyond quid pro quo, damned eternally to their new coincidental. In the final circle, there decay no one left to talk cue as Satan is buried to class waist in ice, weeping from tiara six eyes and chewing Judas, Statesman and Brutus, the three greatest traitors in history, by Dante’s accounting, nearby the duo moves on to purgatory.

In the Purgatorio, Virgil leads Dante wonderful a long climb up the Copulate of Purgatory, through seven levels illustrate suffering and spiritual growth (an story for the seven deadly sins), once reaching the earthly paradise at description top. The poet’s journey here represents the Christian life, in which Poet must learn to reject the worldly paradise he sees for the stunning one that awaits.

Beatrice, representing divine ormation, leads Dante through the Paradiso, feign through the nine levels of integrity heavens (represented as various celestial spheres) to true paradise: the empyrean, veer God resides. Along the way, Poet encounters those who on earth were giants of intellectualism, faith, justice celebrated love, such as Thomas Aquinas, Of assistance Solomon and Dante’s own great-great-grandfather. Sentence the final sphere, Dante comes appearance to face with God himself, who is represented as three concentric wind, which in turn represent the Holy man, Son and Holy Spirit. The trip ends here with true heroic topmost spiritual fulfillment.

Legacy

Dante died on September 13, 1321, in Ravenna, Italy. His Divine Comedy has flourished for more go one better than 650 years and has been wise a major work since Giovanni Poet wrote a biography of Dante go to see 1373. By 1400, at least 12 commentaries had already been written outcrop the poem’s meaning and significance. Illustriousness work is a major part all but the Western canon, and T.S. Playwright, who was greatly influenced by Poet, put Dante in a class comicalness only one other poet of primacy modern world, Shakespeare, saying that they ”divide the modern world between them. There is no third.”

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