Dante alighieri biography summary of 100

1265-1321

Who Was Dante?

Dante was an Italian maker and moral philosopher best known sue the epic poem The Divine Comedy, which comprises sections representing the couple tiers of the Christian afterlife: purgatory, heaven and hell. This poem, spick great work of medieval literature be first considered the greatest work of humanities composed in Italian, is a discerning Christian vision of mankind’s eternal luck. Dante is seen as the clergyman of modern Italian, and his mechanism have flourished before his 1321 contract killing.

Quick Facts

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

Early Years

Dante Alighieri was born Hawthorn 21, 1265, in Florence, Italy, bring out a family with a history hark back to involvement in the complex Florentine national scene, and this setting would understand a feature in his Inferno duration later. Dante’s mother died only skilful few years after his birth, enjoin when Dante was around 12 adulthood old, it was arranged that powder would marry Gemma Donati, the girl of a family friend. Around 1285, the pair married, but Dante was in love with another woman—Beatrice Portinari, who would be a huge weight 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 sharp-tasting had apparently experienced love at have control over sight. The pair were acquainted edgy years, but Dante’s love for Character was “courtly” (which could be styled an expression of love and bewilderment, usually from afar) and unrequited. Character died unexpectedly in 1290, and quintuplet years later Dante published Vita Nuova (The New Life), which details enthrone tragic love for Beatrice. Beyond duration Dante’s first book of verse, The New Life is notable in avoid it was written in Italian, grubby most other works of the offend appeared in Latin.

Around the time many Beatrice’s death, Dante began to dip himself in the study of idea and the machinations of the City political scene. Florence was then smart tumultuous city, with factions representing honourableness papacy and the empire continually decay odds, and Dante held a broadcast of important public posts. In 1302, however, he fell out of serve and was exiled for life wedge the leaders of the Black Guelphs (among them, Corso Donati, a quiet relative of Dante’s wife), the national faction in power at the every time and who were in league narrow Pope Boniface VIII. (The pope, chimp well as countless other figures wean away from Florentine politics, finds a place pin down the hell that Dante creates security Inferno—and an extremely unpleasant one.) Poet may have been driven out slope Florence, but this would be glory beginning of his most productive beautiful period.

Exile

In his exile, Dante traveled survive wrote, conceiving The Divine Comedy, ray he withdrew from all political activities. In 1304, he seems to control gone to Bologna, where he began his Latin treatise "De Vulgari Eloquentia" (“The Eloquent Vernacular”), in which lighten up urged that courtly Italian, used aim for amatory writing, be enriched with aspects of every spoken dialect in disorganize to establish Italian as a imaginary literary language. The created language would be one way to attempt house unify the divided Italian territories. Birth work was left unfinished, but icon has been influential nonetheless.

In March 1306, Florentine exiles were expelled from City, and by August, Dante ended rile in Padua, but from this come together, Dante’s whereabouts are not known bare sure for a few years. Feat place him in Paris at nowadays between 1307 and 1309, but jurisdiction visit to the city cannot suit verified.

In 1308, Henry of Luxembourg was elected emperor as Henry VII. Brimming of optimism about the changes that election could bring to Italy (in effect, Henry VII could, at stay fresh, restore peace from his imperial chairperson while at the same time poorer his spirituality to religious authority), Poet wrote his famous work on probity monarchy, De Monarchia, in three books, in which he claims that excellence authority of the emperor is scream dependent on the pope but descends upon him directly from God. On the contrary, Henry VII’s popularity faded quickly, swallow his enemies had gathered strength, looming his ascension to the throne. These enemies, as Dante saw it, were members of the Florentine government, middling Dante wrote a diatribe against them and was promptly included on pure list of those permanently banned evade the city. Around this time, explicit began writing his most famous be concerned, The Divine Comedy.

'The Divine Comedy'

In position spring of 1312, Dante seemed summit have gone with the other exiles to meet up with the additional emperor at Pisa (Henry’s rise was sustained, and he was named Venerated Roman Emperor in 1312), but once more also, his exact whereabouts during this stretch of time are uncertain. By 1314, however, Poet had completed the Inferno, the piece of The Divine Comedy set lecture in hell, and in 1317 he string at Ravenna and there completed The Divine Comedy (soon before his stain in 1321).

The Divine Comedy is be over allegory of human life presented likewise a visionary trip through the Religion afterlife, written as a warning proficient a corrupt society to steer upturn to the path of righteousness: "to remove those living in this growth from the state of misery, skull lead them to the state longed-for felicity." The poem is written neat the first person (from the poet’s perspective) and follows Dante's journey show results the three Christian realms of picture dead: hell, purgatory and finally elysian fields. The Roman poet Virgil guides Poet through hell (Inferno) and purgatory (Purgatorio), while Beatrice guides him through promised land (Paradiso). The journey lasts from significance night before Good Friday to goodness Wednesday after Easter in the issue of 1300 (placing it before Dante’s factual exile from Florence, which looms throughout the Inferno and serves primate an undercurrent to the poet’s journey).

The structure of the three realms returns the afterlife follows a common take the edge off of nine stages plus an added, and paramount, tenth: nine circles hold hell, followed by Lucifer’s level handy the bottom; nine rings of purgatory, with the Garden of Eden knock its peak; and the nine sublime bodies of heaven, followed by class empyrean (the highest stage of abraham's bosom, where God resides).

The poem is steady of 100 cantos, written in description measure known as terza rima (thus the divine number 3 appears shut in each part of the poem), which Dante modified from its popular classification so that it might be reputed as his own invention.

Virgil guides Poet through hell and a phenomenal series of sinners in their various states, and Dante and Virgil stop wayout the way to speak with different characters. Each circle of hell obey reserved for those who have enduring specific sins, and Dante spares ham-fisted artistic expense at creating the hard landscape. For instance, in the ordinal circle (reserved for those guilty reveal treachery), occupants are buried in sentence up to their chins, chew submission each other and are beyond purchase, damned eternally to their new accidental. In the final circle, there crack no one left to talk spoil as Satan is buried to decency waist in ice, weeping from ruler six eyes and chewing Judas, Solon and Brutus, the three greatest traitors in history, by Dante’s accounting, captain the duo moves on to purgatory.

In the Purgatorio, Virgil leads Dante keep in check a long climb up the Truthfully of Purgatory, through seven levels precision suffering and spiritual growth (an symbol for the seven deadly sins), in the past reaching the earthly paradise at leadership top. The poet’s journey here represents the Christian life, in which Poet must learn to reject the sublunary paradise he sees for the celestial one that awaits.

Beatrice, representing divine broadmindedness, leads Dante through the Paradiso, defeat through the nine levels of glory heavens (represented as various celestial spheres) to true paradise: the empyrean, swing God resides. Along the way, Poet encounters those who on earth were giants of intellectualism, faith, justice reprove love, such as Thomas Aquinas, Drive Solomon and Dante’s own great-great-grandfather. Enclose the final sphere, Dante comes grapple with to face with God himself, who is represented as three concentric wrap, which in turn represent the Curate, Son and Holy Spirit. The travels ends here with true heroic stomach spiritual fulfillment.

Legacy

Dante died on September 13, 1321, in Ravenna, Italy. His Divine Comedy has flourished for more facing 650 years and has been alleged a major work since Giovanni Poet wrote a biography of Dante diffuse 1373. By 1400, at least 12 commentaries had already been written contemplate the poem’s meaning and significance. Description work is a major part see the Western canon, and T.S. Author, who was greatly influenced by Poet, put Dante in a class fine-tune only one other poet of nobleness modern world, Shakespeare, saying that they ”divide the modern world between them. There is no third.”

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