Tag: The Divine Comedy

The Intersection of politics and writing in The Prince and The Divine Comedy

Politics and art are usually thought to be on two different planes, politics is the real world and art is an imaginary world created by the artist but that is completely wrong; Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Machiavelli’s The Prince prove that they both affect each other very much. Both Dante Alighieri and Niccolo Machiavelli tied their work to the politics of their hometown, Florence Italy but they did so in very different ways. 

The Divine Comedy was written by Dante in the 1300s while he was living in exile from Florence due to his allegiance with the white Guelf political party in Florence who were defeated by the black Guelfs. Throughout this exile and even while writing his poems, it is evident that he believes an emperor would be the best person to lead Florence. This was clear in Canto 34 when Dante the pilgrim, sees Satan in the Ninth circle of hell and described what he sees. Lucifer is described as having three heads with a sinner being held in each mouth. Two of the sinners, one in the right and another in the left, were two of the biggest betrayers of Julius Cesar, one of the greatest and most powerful emperors to ever walk the Earth who held power over all of the Roman Empire, including Dante’s native Florence. The inclusion of both Brutus and Cassius highlights how much Dante the author believes in the power of an emperor, so much so that instead of relegating Brutus and Cassius to just the Ninth circle of inferno, he makes them suffer the most in Satan’s mouth where he “with gnashing teeth he tore to bits a sinner, so that he brought much pain to three at once.”, which shows just how much their betrayal of Julius disgusted Dante the author. However, the third sinner that was the biggest traitor of them all, was Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Jesus Christ. He is in Satan’s middle mouth, which shows just how deep his betrayal had been, even when compared to Brutus and Cassius.

Dante’s Satan

The decision to use that subtle detail highlights Dante’s most important political thought, the idea that any emperor as powerful as they may be, is still subordinate to God. Similarly, Dante believes that the only way to achieve peace is to have a political system where all politics is “seen as deriving from that of the Emperor, who in turn derives his political authority from God.”[1] This is why Judas is in the middle, although the betrayal of Julius Cesar was tragic, nothing and no one is more important or powerful than God and to betray God as Judas did is the biggest sin one can commit. This is where Dante differs from Machiavelli, Machiavelli’s writings display a somewhat secular way of ruling, he talks much more about human nature than God’s will and guidance when it comes to ruling.

Machiavelli’s The Prince was written over 200 years after The Divine Comedy was written but yet it still is still heavy in the author’s political opinion. It is much more logical and straightforward than The Divine Comedy, but it is just as, or even more opinionated in terms of politics than Dante’s writings. In The Prince, Machiavelli describes what he believes a good leader should do while ruling over his or her land and it acts as a guidebook for rulers. Machiavelli himself was exiled from Florence after the ruling family at the time, the Medicis, did not like his involvement in a movement to drive them out of the city. He in turn writes The Prince while in exile to Lorenzo De Medici, the current leader of Florence, as a way to get back on his family’s good graces; to put it simply, without politics The Prince wouldn’t exist at all. He writes about how he believes a prince should act towards his people, sometimes even stating that being evil in terms of politics is not an inherently bad thing, as well as tackling questions such as “is it better for a ruler to be feared or loved by his people?” He calls for a balance between being ruthless and being merciful as a leader and just generally gives secular and straightforward advice as compared to the poetry that was lined with allegories that Dante wrote 2 centuries prior and he uses “..his own experience as a foreign secretary in Florence.”[2] as a background for The Prince. However, Christian thought and biblical mentions can be seen throughout his writing, especially in Chapter 6, where he mentions Moses and his rise to power using force. Although he speaks about Moses in a more historical sense than a Christian sense, it is clear he still looks to the Bible as a basis for his ideas. He speaks about God in a more religious sense in the finishing chapter of The Prince chapter 34, where he speaks about God favoring the Lorenzo Medici which somewhat suggests that he agrees with Dante, that God should be placed above leaders(or that at least he’s willing to write that to get back to Florence.)

In today’s society, it is incredibly easy to divide the world into the arts and the “real world”, but both these writings from two different time periods show that there most art is a mix of both the artists’ real world experiences and opinions and their imagination.

A portrait of Niccolo Machiavelli

References:

[1] https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/discover-dante/doc/inferno/page/13

[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Prince

The Portrayal of Women In Italian Literature

Over the course of this class, we’ve discussed and analyzed many famous Italian authors who are widely regarded as some of the greats within their field. However, while these authors remain influential today, their works were published at a point in history where women were generally considered to be inferior to men and were often forced into lesser roles in society. As a result of this, we can see the influence of gender roles and its impact on the representation of women in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, Boccaccio’s ‘The Decameron’, and Petrarch’s ‘Canzoniere’. 

‘The Divine Comedy’ focuses on the journey that Dante, the pilgrim, takes through Hell, Purgatory, and eventually Heaven (referred to as ‘Paradise’ within the text). Over the course of this journey, Dante speaks to countless souls that have moved on to the afterlife and writes about their stories. However, men tend to dominate these conversations while women are sidelined. In fact, there are only two significant women in ‘The Divine Comedy’ that we discussed: Francesca and Beatrice. Francesca first appears in Canto 5, which centers around the second circle of Hell – lust; Dante asks Francesca and Paolo ended up being damned, to which Francesca recounts the story of reading ‘Lancelot du lac’ with her lover and that “one point alone was the one that overpowered us” (canto 5, lines 131-132). While Dante feels pity for the couple, as apparent from him fainting as the canto ends, he still believes that they should be punished for their love. In canto 3, the gates of Hell read “Justice moved my high maker; divine power made me, highest wisdom, and primal love” (Canto 3, lines 4-6), which makes it evidently clear that Dante believes all souls in Hell deserve their punishment, no matter how much pity he feels. On the other hand, we have Beatrice, who plays a significant role in Dante’s literature as a whole. In ‘The Divine Comedy’, Beatrice is the woman who made Dante’s journey possible in the first place. As opposed to Francesca, who Dante shuns for her sin, Beatrice is the exact opposite; he reveres Beatrice as graceful, beautiful, and holy. This is especially evident once we reach ‘Paradiso’, as Beatrice is the woman who allows Dante to come into contact with God, which is shown in the quote “The role that Dante assigns to her is reminiscent of the role that Christ plays in allowing humans to know God and achieve Heaven” (Carey, 2007, p.93). The portrayal of these two women are obviously very different, which makes it clear that Dante believes women should embody purity like Beatrice, and that those like Francesca who do not, should be punished. 

An illustration of Beatrice guiding Dante by Gustave Dore in 1857 (from: Gustave Doré – Dante Alighieri – Inferno – plate 7 (Beatrice Stock Photo. Alamy . (n.d.). Retrieved December 23, 2021, from https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-gustave-dor-dante-alighieri-inferno-plate-7-beatrice-137875413.html)

On the other hand, we have ‘The Decameron’ which features several stories centering around women. As opposed to Dante, Boccaccio depicts many strong, witty women that are able to stand up for themselves despite the stigma around doing so at the time. A prime example of this is seen in the story of the Madonna Filippa, which is the 7th story of the 6th day; This story centers around Filippa, who is caught cheating on her husband and is then taken to trial, where she could be put to death if found guilty. Instead of denying her crime, she admits to the judge that she was guilty of adultery and defends her actions by stating that she’s never denied her husband anything, that she simply has surplus love to give and asks the judge “Am I to cast it to the dogs? Is it not much better to bestow it on a gentleman that loves me more dearly than himself, than to suffer it to come to nought or worse?” (line 17). Seemingly through her wit alone, she’s able to get the crowd and judge on her side, and gets the law changed such that only women who commit adultery for money are punished. However, upon further inspection, this story isn’t as empowering as it seems. Firstly, while many women in The Decameron stand up for themselves (which was revolutionary in literature at the time), they generally don’t challenge specific laws or roles placed on women by society. This rings true for Filippa as well. She does challenge the law on her own, but even after her defense, it remains put in place and is only changed such that “thenceforth only such women as should wrong their husbands for money should be within its purview” (line 18); Filippa is only able to change the law to fit her given circumstances rather than calling for the abolition of said statute, or to have men included in it’s punishment. Additionally, Boccaccio seems to allude that Filippa’s beauty played a big part in her success. As Marcel Janssens states, women in The Decameron are often able to succeed in defending themselves “provided she is beautiful, witty, and tricky” (Wright, 1991, p. 27), and Filippa falls into this category as well. Early on in this story, it’s stated that Filippa’s beauty and poised nature caused the judge to feel sympathetic towards her, as shown in the quote “The Podestà, surveying her, and taking note of her extraordinary beauty, and exquisite manners, and the high courage that her words evinced, was touched with compassion for her” (line 11). While Filippa made a compelling argument that was able to get the crowd on her side, the prior quote begs the question: If Filippa did not have her “extraordinary beauty”, would she have been as successful?

Finally, we have Petrarch, whose work is unique as it only focuses on one woman: Laura. Despite nearly all of Petrarch’s poems being centered around his love for Laura (even after her death), she never actually speaks in any of his work. Instead, Petrarch decides to speak about her and describe how much he loves her, rather than depicting any direct interactions the two may have had. Similar to the depictions of Beatrice in ‘The Divine Comedy’, Petrarch describes Laura as if she’s a holy figure rather than a normal woman. This is especially seen in sonnet 90, where he states “The way she walked was not the way of mortals but of angelic forms;” (lines 9-10) and refers to her as “a godly spirit and a living sun” (line 12). While Petrarch clearly loves Laura deeply and praises her highly, this does little to let the reader know who she was as a person in real life. Due to Laura’s lack of a voice within the text, Nancy Vickers points out that “bodies fetishized by a poetic voice logically do not have a voice of their own; the world of making words, of making texts, is not theirs” (Cox, 2005, p. 3). Ultimately, Petrarch’s depiction of Laura is one that many women deem to be fetishizing, as she seemingly has no thoughts or words of her own and is only seen through the eyes of the poet.

An engraving that depicts both Laura and Petrarch done by Antonio Salamanca (from: Antonio Salamanca (1500-62) – Laura and Petrarch. Royal Collection Trust. (n.d.). Retrieved December 23, 2021, from https://www.rct.uk/collection/809553/laura-and-petrarch)

Overall, Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch are all very influential authors, and their works should still be taught and read today due to how much they’ve impacted literature as we know it. However, it’s also important to note that these works were products of their time, which is evidently clear from how each author portrays women; ranging from Boccaccio’s depiction of women who use their wits and beauty to get what they want, to Petrarch and Dante’s love interests who embody holiness. 

Citations:

  1. Dante, A. D. (1996). The divine comedy of dante alighieri : Inferno. Oxford University Press USA – OSO. 
  2. Carey, Brooke L., “Le Donne di Dante: An Historical Study of Female Characters in The Divine Comedy” (2007). Syracuse University Honors Program Capstone Projects. 573. https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/573
  3. Decameron web. Decameron Web | Texts. (2010, February 15). Retrieved December 23, 2021, from https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/DecShowText.php?myID=nov0607&lang=eng 
  4. WRIGHT, E. C. (1991). Marguerite Reads Giovanni: Gender and Narration in the “Heptaméron” and the “Decameron.” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 15(1), 21–36. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43445607 
  5.   Cox, V. (2005). Sixteenth-century women Petrarchists and the legacy of Laura. Retrieved December 23, 2021, from https://www.projectcontinua.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/16th-C-Women-Petrarchists-and-the-Legacy-of-Laura.pdf  
  6. Petrarca, Francesco, Selected Poems from the Canzoniere
  7. Antonio Salamanca (1500-62) – Laura and Petrarch. Royal Collection Trust. (n.d.). Retrieved December 23, 2021, from https://www.rct.uk/collection/809553/laura-and-petrarch  
  8. Gustave Doré – Dante Alighieri – Inferno – plate 7 (Beatrice Stock Photo. Alamy . (n.d.). Retrieved December 23, 2021, from https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-gustave-dor-dante-alighieri-inferno-plate-7-beatrice-137875413.html 

The Divine Feminine

The role of women in our society has long been a topic of discussion. Though it is much more common to see examples of liberated women in today’s literature and in all respective forms of media, this wasn’t always the case. Female writers were often excluded from the scene, which meant that their stories were usually told through the lens of men. This is part of the reason why there was such a profuse amount of dependent and submissive female roles in literary work. However, there is always an exception to every rule; three Italian writers, who aside from contributing to the Renaissance, also displayed forward-thinking in their writing. Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, and Giovanni Boccaccio have all credited women for being their main source of inspiration. They have also presented strong examples of female characters which reinforces the idea that women have a right to occupy spots in literary spaces.

In The Divine Comedy, Alighieri takes us on a journey through the different realms that are commonly referred to as the Christian afterlife: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. When Dante the pilgrim wakes up in a dark forest, right beyond the entrance of Inferno, he is visibly frightened and in need of some guidance. That is where Beatrice steps in; his savior in the story, but also his muse in the real world. She watched as Dante strayed further away from his faith, and wanted nothing more than to guide him to the light. She sends Virgil to protect Dante while he makes his way through Hell and witnesses all the atrocities first-hand. At one point, Dante confesses, “Oh full of pity she who has helped me! and you courteous, who have quickly obeyed the true words she offered you! Your words have so filled my heart with desire to come with you, that I have returned to my first purpose” (Inferno, Canto 2). In other words, Dante is attributing his will to Beatrice’s generosity and kindness. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Beatrice’s role in The Divine Comedy, is that Dante characterizes her as a religious figure rather than a normal lover. She has an undisputed divine nature throughout the story and plays such an important role in the pilgrim’s salvation (Beatrice: Inspiration, Divine Love, and the Key to Salvation). Although her moments in the Comedy were few and far between, she strikes me as one of the most notable figures in the entire story and the antithesis of a woman who relies on a man.

Beatrice depicted by Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

In Il Canzoniere, Petrarca professes his love for his muse with hundreds of poems. The vast majority of these poems are written in sonnet form and they detail an array of emotions, from when he first fell in love with Laura to when she passed away. In sonnet 90, for example, he describes her appearance to us in a thoughtful manner and portrays her as a source of light in his life. He says, “She’d let her gold hair flow free in the breeze and whirled it into thousands of sweet knots … The way she walked was not the way of mortals but of angelic forms, and when she spoke more than an earthly voice it was that sang.” Though it was not uncommon for Italian poets to dedicate sonnets for the women they admired, Petrarca’s love for Laura was especially haunting because his passion for her only multiplied after she passed. He expressed his heavy feelings about her death in sonnet 319, where he says that his days seem to just pass him by now that she’s gone. Furthermore, he calls the world “wretched” and “arrogant” for taking Laura away and leaving him in a broken state. It’s evident that Petrarca thinks very highly of Laura, but more than anything, I think this also communicates just how much he values the women in his life. After her death, Petrarca had a tough time getting by because of how lost and abandoned he felt. When her soul moved on to the Heavens, as he said, a piece of him died too. Without her, he felt vulnerable and incomplete.

Petrarch and Laura de Noves, Ashmolean Museum.

Boccaccio’s The Decameron was written at the height of the Bubonic plague. Death and grief overtook all of Europe as sickness spread from one person to another. One of the main reasons he wrote The Decameron was, of course, for entertainment. As you could imagine, humor and joy were very scarce given the circumstances. However, Boccaccio also mentions in the preface of The Decameron, that he’s dedicating this work to women. He writes, “the ladies just mentioned will, perhaps, derive from the delightful things that happen in these tales both pleasure and useful counsel, inasmuch as they will recognize what should be avoided and what should be sought after. This, I believe, can only result in putting an end to their melancholy.” Simply put, he hopes that the women reading his work will take notice of the good and the bad, and possibly apply it to their own lives. Boccaccio also gives women the opportunity to recount the parables in The Decameron, as well as lead them. In a lot of the stories, there’s a common theme of men who try to outsmart their female counterparts, to no avail. With this, he implies that women can in fact be superior in terms of skill, which is something that has long been missing in fictional and historical texts alike (Kulshrestha).

To conclude, imbedded in these three written pieces by revolutionary contemporaries are high commends for the women who make them feel complete. Whether it’s done by depicting them as religious figures, describing how lost they feel without them or dedicating their work to them, these men gave women a leading role in their stories during a time period where women were seen as subordinate to men.

Work Cited

Alighieri, Dante. “The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno” ProQuest eBook Central, 29 Feb. 1996, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ccny-ebooks/reader.action?docID=693941

“Beatrice: Inspiration, Divine Love, and the Key to Salvation” Digication EPortfolio, Boston University, 24 Oct. 2010, https://bu.digication.com/wr100B1_challenerjn/Final_Draft2 

Petrarca, Francesco. “Il Canzoniere”

Boccaccio, Giovanni. “The Decameron”

Kulshrestha, Sujay. “Giovanni Boccaccio’s ‘the Decameron’ and the Roles of Men and Women.” Inquiries Journal, 1 Dec. 2010, http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/344/giovanni-boccaccios-the-decameron-and-the-roles-of-men-and-women

Virgil: The man truly behind the Divine Comedy?

Portrait of Virgil; Unknown artist

Throughout all the various cantos we have read during our exploration of Dante’s Inferno, Virgil has been a recurrent and important figure in Dante’s journey through hell; he is written by Dante to be a protective, grounded, and intelligent guide. His influence on Dante is very prominent in the poem but it is also incredibly important outside of the pages as well. Virgil or “Vergil” depending on the language was a very famous and inspirational poet living in the Roman Empire during the time of Cesar Augustus; his work has been incredibly influential but none more than Aeneid. Aeneid is an epic poem that details the story of Aeneas, the ancestor of the Romans; similarly to Dante’s trenches through the circles of hell, Aeneas adventures through what is called the “underworld” and encounters many beasts. Because of Dante’s admiration for Virgil and the similarities between the two poems, many scholars have come to the conclusion that Dante “seemed to use the Aeneid as a base and the parts which he did extract from the Aeneid, he carefully altered for his own purposes and beliefs.”[1] Dante looked to Virgil’s work as an important start to creating the Divine Comedy but also turned to God for help in creating his masterpiece. Dante himself admits his love and admiration for Virgils work in Inferno Canto I in lines 85-87 when Virgil appears from the wilderness and this love is present throughout Inferno as Dante blindly follows and trusts Virgil through Hell.

It is incredibly important to remember that Virgil died before the birth of Christ and thus, was not a Christian while Dante was obviously an incredibly religious and devoted Christian. According to this, it may seem like the “purposes and beliefs” that Dante adds to Aeneid to create the Divine Comedy would be Christian ones and that is mostly true; the entirety of the Divine Comedy was influenced and borrows ideas from the Bible and the established Christian church but that does not mean that Virgil’s influence doesn’t touch on the “Divine” part of the Divine Comedy. It is also widely accepted by many people, I’m assuming by Dante as well, that Virgil “was an anima naturaliter Christiana, a prophet who, in his Fourth Eclogue, foretold the birth of Christ”[2] The Fourth Eclogue was another one of Virgil’s great works that also had an immense impact on how Dante thought of Virgil; the fact that Virgil is shown in Inferno as a figure of great wisdom and intelligence(he was able to predict the birth of Jesus Christ as stated before) but not divine enough to enter into to Paradiso with Dante( he was stated to have died a pagan). Virgil is an indispensable part of Inferno and of the incredible work that is the Divine Comedy in general both as a character and as an influence on the work itself.

Dante & His Impact on Literature

Dante Alighieri is widely considered one of the greatest poets of all time, and for good reason. His most famous work, The Divine Comedy, is still greatly influential today despite being released around 650 years ago. It’s notoriety and long-lasting impact can be attributed to the way Dante’s work revolutionized literature in his time, popularizing certain styles of poetry and inspiring many great authors to write in their native tongue.

One of Dante’s many accomplishments includes helping to popularize the sonnet. The Sicilian School was a renowned group of poets from Sicily, Tuscany, and southern Italy that gathered in the court of Emperor Frederick II, and they came together to invent the poetic style known as the sonnet (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Sicilian school). Dante was greatly inspired by this group of poets, and eventually began writing sonnets of his own. At the age of 18, Dante published La Vita Nuova, which was 42 chapters long and included 25 sonnets centered around his love for Beatrice (Quinones, Legacy and influence of Dante). La Vita Nuova also included themes of “courtly love” (Amazon Affiliate Program, How did Dante influence the Renaissance 2021), which later spread all throughout Europe during the Renaissance. Dante also invented his own style of poetry, known as terza rima, which follows the pattern of the second line of a stanza rhyming with the first and third line of the next stanza (a pattern of ABA, BCB, CDC, etc) (Academy of American Poets, Terza Rima). An example of the terza rima style is shown in Dante’s very first canto of Inferno, which features the lines “Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte; ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai, dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte. Io non so ben ridir com’ i’ v’intrai, tant’ era pien di sonno a quel punto che la verace via abbandonai. Ma poi ch’i’ fui al piè d’un colle giunto, là dove terminava quella valle che m’avea di paura il cor compunto,” (Alighieri, Canto 1, lines 7-15). This style inspired many poets; ranging from famous Italian poets such as Boccaccio and  Petrarch, and spreading outside of Italy to the rest of Europe after being brought to England by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th-century with the poem “Complaints to his Lady”  (Academy of American Poets, Terza Rima). 

The cover of Dante’s ‘La Vita Nuova’, which helped popularize the sonnet in poetry across Europe.

Unsurprisingly, Dante also inspired many authors to start writing in their native language. During the Middle Ages (500-1500 CE), literature and philosophical works were typically only written in Latin, which made these works inaccessible to the general public. However, Dante believed that one’s own vernacular was suitable enough to use in these genres, which was a radical idea at the time. Dante later wrote The Divine Comedy in his Tuscan dialect, but also borrowed from other Italian dialects and even from Latin itself (Amazon Affiliate Program, How did Dante influence the Renaissance 2021) . Due to the success of The Divine Comedy, Tuscan became the standard language for works of literature and many Renaissance writers began to write in their own unique dialect. 

  1. Amazon Affiliate Program. (2021, September 21). How did Dante influence the Renaissance. How did Dante influence the Renaissance – DailyHistory.org. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://dailyhistory.org/How_did_Dante_influence_the_Renaissance. 
  2. Baldwin, E., (2020, October 15). Terza Rima. Poem Analysis. Retrieved from https://poemanalysis.com/poetic-form/terza-rima/
  3. Academy of American Poets. (n.d.). Terza Rima. Poets.org. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://poets.org/glossary/terza-rima. 
  4. Quinones, R. J. (n.d.). Legacy and influence of Dante. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dante-Alighieri/Legacy-and-influence. 
  5. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Sicilian school. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/art/Sicilian-school. 
  6. Blauvelt, C. (2018, June 5). Dante and the divine comedy: He took us on a tour of hell. BBC Culture. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180604-dante-and-the-divine-comedy-he-took-us-on-a-tour-of-hell.