The Divine Comedy

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Recommended: Political themes of dante's inferno

Winston Churchill once said: "If you are going through hell, keep going." If you were to describe Dante’s Divine Comedy as simply as possible you would use this quote. However, Dante’s Divine Comedy has never been that simple. Sure, it is about religion and hell and heaven. But it is also about political ideas. The way spirituality and politics commingle in Dante’s world has interested literature fiends and political theorists alike. So what exactly is Dante’s Divine Comedy? How did Dante’s everyday life affect this piece of literature? And most importantly, what were the political ideas Dante managed to weave into his story powered by religion?

Dante’s Divine Comedy is a narrative about how Dante goes through hell and finally manages to get to heaven. Dante recognizes his sins and goes from misery to happiness in three stages, "Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso." The poem is designed "to remove those living in this life from a state of misery, and bring them to a state of happiness" by showing the metaphorical turmoil a soul must go through to reach inner content (Gilbert 82).

Dante’s Divine Comedy is famous for a lot of reasons. It is considered the best epic poem in Italian history (Bigongiari 12). People were fascinated by it because it was the first piece of literature in that time period to address political AND spiritual morals. Dante’s Divine Comedy is an allegory. That means that the theme of the story is not readily apparent, the reader must decipher it for its meaning. (Gilbert 31). This has caused controversy among readers, which is one of the reasons it has lasted the test of time.

Although the Divine Comedy is his most famous work, Dante wrote many pieces before it in which he discusses the beginnings of the fin...

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...t highly conflict each other in today’s society (i.e, the separation of church and state) the world is still deciphering his meaning and how we can let Dante’s Divine Comedy influence the world so that we may gain a proper order.

Works Cited.

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso.)

New York: American Classics Publishing, 2001.

Bergin, Thomas. Perspectives on the Divine Comedy. New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press, 1967.

Bigongiari, Dino. Readings in the Divine Comedy. Dover: Griffon House Publications for

The Bagehot Council, 2006.

Clements, Robert. American Critical Essays on the Divine Comedy. London: 1997.

Farnell, Stewart. The Political Ideas of the Divine Comedy. Lanham: University Press of

America, 1985.

Gilbert, Allan. Dante’s Conception of Justice. Durham: Duke University Press, 1925.

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