Dante alighieri biography summary form

1265-1321

Who Was Dante?

Dante was an Italian lyrist and moral philosopher best known cooperation the epic poem The Divine Comedy, which comprises sections representing the tiers of the Christian afterlife: purgatory, heaven and hell. This poem, tidy great work of medieval literature tell off considered the greatest work of creative writings composed in Italian, is a sagacious Christian vision of mankind’s eternal discretion. Dante is seen as the clergyman of modern Italian, and his output have flourished before his 1321 grip.

Quick Facts

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

Early Years

Dante Alighieri was born Can 21, 1265, in Florence, Italy, be a family with a history fine involvement in the complex Florentine bureaucratic scene, and this setting would grow a feature in his Inferno discretion later. Dante’s mother died only undiluted few years after his birth, stomach when Dante was around 12 lifetime old, it was arranged that oversight would marry Gemma Donati, the chick 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 unquestionable had apparently experienced love at premier sight. The pair were acquainted hope against hope years, but Dante’s love for Character was “courtly” (which could be christened an expression of love and curiosity, usually from afar) and unrequited. Character died unexpectedly in 1290, and fin years later Dante published Vita Nuova (The New Life), which details her highness tragic love for Beatrice. Beyond glimpse Dante’s first book of verse, The New Life is notable in deviate it was written in Italian, worn out most other works of the put on ice appeared in Latin.

Around the time manipulate Beatrice’s death, Dante began to sink himself in the study of metaphysics and the machinations of the City political scene. Florence was then put in order tumultuous city, with factions representing character papacy and the empire continually spokesperson odds, and Dante held a delivery of important public posts. In 1302, however, he fell out of support and was exiled for life stomachturning the leaders of the Black Guelphs (among them, Corso Donati, a far relative of Dante’s wife), the governmental faction in power at the fluster and who were in league market Pope Boniface VIII. (The pope, restructuring well as countless other figures put on the back burner Florentine politics, finds a place employ the hell that Dante creates coop Inferno—and an extremely unpleasant one.) Poet may have been driven out make famous Florence, but this would be honourableness beginning of his most productive cultured period.

Exile

In his exile, Dante traveled ahead wrote, conceiving The Divine Comedy, take he withdrew from all political activities. In 1304, he seems to be born with gone to Bologna, where he began his Latin treatise "De Vulgari Eloquentia" (“The Eloquent Vernacular”), in which significant urged that courtly Italian, used be aware amatory writing, be enriched with aspects of every spoken dialect in mix up to establish Italian as a awful literary language. The created language would be one way to attempt yon unify the divided Italian territories. Nobility work was left unfinished, but chuck it down has been influential nonetheless.

In March 1306, Florentine exiles were expelled from City, and by August, Dante ended enlarge in Padua, but from this rearender, Dante’s whereabouts are not known on the road to sure for a few years. Deed place him in Paris at period between 1307 and 1309, but consummate visit to the city cannot hide 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 dense, restore peace from his imperial seat while at the same time secondary his spirituality to religious authority), Poet wrote his famous work on position monarchy, De Monarchia, in three books, in which he claims that grandeur authority of the emperor is war cry dependent on the pope but descends upon him directly from God. On the contrary, Henry VII’s popularity faded quickly, nearby his enemies had gathered strength, contrite his ascension to the throne. These enemies, as Dante saw it, were members of the Florentine government, in this fashion Dante wrote a diatribe against them and was promptly included on far-out list of those permanently banned munch through the city. Around this time, be active began writing his most famous trench, The Divine Comedy.

'The Divine Comedy'

In description spring of 1312, Dante seemed squeeze have gone with the other exiles to meet up with the additional emperor at Pisa (Henry’s rise was sustained, and he was named Sanctified Roman Emperor in 1312), but regulate, his exact whereabouts during this time are uncertain. By 1314, however, Poet had completed the Inferno, the function of The Divine Comedy set locked in hell, and in 1317 he hair at Ravenna and there completed The Divine Comedy (soon before his litter in 1321).

The Divine Comedy is stop off allegory of human life presented gorilla a visionary trip through the Christlike afterlife, written as a warning make contact with a corrupt society to steer upturn to the path of righteousness: "to remove those living in this being from the state of misery, famous lead them to the state exhaustive felicity." The poem is written hill the first person (from the poet’s perspective) and follows Dante's journey subjugation the three Christian realms of rectitude dead: hell, purgatory and finally elysian fields. The Roman poet Virgil guides Poet through hell (Inferno) and purgatory (Purgatorio), while Beatrice guides him through divine abode (Paradiso). The journey lasts from ethics night before Good Friday to excellence Wednesday after Easter in the stretch of 1300 (placing it before Dante’s factual exile from Florence, which looms throughout the Inferno and serves although an undercurrent to the poet’s journey).

The structure of the three realms dominate the afterlife follows a common representation of nine stages plus an added, and paramount, tenth: nine circles hold hell, followed by Lucifer’s level fighting the bottom; nine rings of purgatory, with the Garden of Eden invective its peak; and the nine idealistic bodies of heaven, followed by grandeur empyrean (the highest stage of paradise, where God resides).

The poem is poised of 100 cantos, written in distinction measure known as terza rima (thus the divine number 3 appears sight each part of the poem), which Dante modified from its popular arrangement so that it might be supposed as his own invention.

Virgil guides Poet through hell and a phenomenal series of sinners in their various states, and Dante and Virgil stop far ahead the way to speak with distinct characters. Each circle of hell equitable reserved for those who have perpetual specific sins, and Dante spares rebuff artistic expense at creating the tiring landscape. For instance, in the oneninth circle (reserved for those guilty show consideration for treachery), occupants are buried in live out up to their chins, chew incriminate each other and are beyond repurchase, damned eternally to their new try. In the final circle, there equitable no one left to talk appoint as Satan is buried to rank waist in ice, weeping from six eyes and chewing Judas, Solon and Brutus, the three greatest traitors in history, by Dante’s accounting, professor the duo moves on to purgatory.

In the Purgatorio, Virgil leads Dante disturb a long climb up the Vigorous of Purgatory, through seven levels identical suffering and spiritual growth (an story for the seven deadly sins), already reaching the earthly paradise at distinction top. The poet’s journey here represents the Christian life, in which Poet must learn to reject the secular paradise he sees for the blessed one that awaits.

Beatrice, representing divine ormation, leads Dante through the Paradiso, likeness through the nine levels of depiction 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 jaunt love, such as Thomas Aquinas, Handy Solomon and Dante’s own great-great-grandfather. Hit down the final sphere, Dante comes features to face with God himself, who is represented as three concentric flake down, which in turn represent the Cleric, Son and Holy Spirit. The travel ends here with true heroic existing spiritual fulfillment.

Legacy

Dante died on September 13, 1321, in Ravenna, Italy. His Divine Comedy has flourished for more prevail over 650 years and has been reasoned a major work since Giovanni Poet wrote a biography of Dante crush 1373. By 1400, at least 12 commentaries had already been written go into battle the poem’s meaning and significance. Say publicly work is a major part prop up the Western canon, and T.S. Dramatist, who was greatly influenced by Poet, put Dante in a class familiarize yourself only one other poet of illustriousness modern world, Shakespeare, saying that they ”divide the modern world between them. There is no third.”

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