Divine Comedy

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Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”

In The Divine Comedy Dante uses several symbols to demonstrate life as a literary connection to the Bible, as well as his illusion of an afterlife. He opens his allegory walking in a dark forest, stating that the “straightforward pathway had been lost” speaking in terms to him losing his way in life. The woods void from light represent Dante’s sins on Earth, while the sun’s rays shining down on the top of the mountain he comes across signifies the goodness in the world, and the holy place that is heaven, far yet attainable, waiting to be reached. He uses these metaphors to reference Christianity in a sense of finding one’s faith and embarking on a spiritual journey towards God and the cleaning of a person’s soul.
Dante uses “justice” as a reoccurring theme in this epic poem, describing the torment the souls damned to hell in each circle have to endure. This endless torture is systematically given out to directly correspond to the sins these souls committed in their period on Earth, contrary to the highly expressed assessment that all sins are equal. Michael Houdmann spoke on whether or not Dante’s epic poem was biblically accurate stating:

The Bible says nothing of varying levels of punishment in hell, nor of different levels of severity of sin. The universal punishment for all who reject Jesus Christ as Savior is to be “cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). As far as sin is concerned, the Bible declares that failing to keep God’s law in even the smallest aspect makes us guilty of all of it and therefore worthy of eternal punishment (James 2:10). The murderer, the liar and the proud man are all equally guilty in God’s eyes, and all earn the same basic punishment—the lake of fi...

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... more ways than one, from a Christian timepiece to an ancient philosophy book or even a political manifesto. It’s a beautiful piece of literature that has an abundance of lessons and historical layers, but cannot be taken so seriously to take it for more than it is. The Divine Comedy will stand the test of time, and continue to influence other scholars, and inspire others to use their imaginations to embark on their own spiritual journeys.

Works Cited

The English Standard Version Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Trans. Henry W. Longfelllow. 3 vols. 1867 N.p.: Creative Commons, PDF.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Inferno.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 30 Oct. 2013.
Houdmann, Michael. "Divine Comedy: Biblically Accurate?" GotQuestions.org. Got Questions Ministries, n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.

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