Dante's Inferno Essay

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Inferno

Inferno, by Dante Alighieri contains information regarding the author, provenance, genre, language, and intended audience. To begin, Dante was born in May in 1265 C.E. in Florence, Italy into a middle class family. He experienced a lot of turmoil and adversity throughout his life. He was an only child and around the age of five his mother died. His father soon remarried, had more kids, and died around the time Dante turned 12 years old leaving his uncles to be in charge of his schooling and welfare. He attended the University of Bologna around the age of 20 where he took advantage of the numerous learning opportunities, but tragedy stroke again when Dante turned 25 he learned that Beatrice, his childhood love, had died. In 1301 …show more content…

The two political groups were separated into the Guelfs and the Ghibelines. The Guelfs supported the pope and the Roman Catholic Empire, while the Ghibelines supported the emperor. After a war, the Guelfs took control which created another division between people. There were the Black Guelfs who supported the papacy, while the White Guelfs wanted the return of the emperor. When the Black Guelfs took power they exiled the White Guelfs and Dante forcing him to live a traveling, lonely lifestyle. Also, throughout his life, Dante experienced numerous deaths of his loved ones: his mom, his father, and Beatrice. His exile left him with a lot of time to think about death and what happens to souls of people after they die. This caused him to write the Divine Comedies which explain the three realms of the afterlife and how people get into each realm. Furthermore, because of the topics of the comedies are on the afterlife, there are many Christian aspects of books. One example is that Inferno is set in 1300 during “Passion Week” which is the days leading to Easter. Also, by explaining the reasons people go to Hell or Heaven, he made what seemed to be foreign religious views tangible to everyday life. The Christian beliefs and concrete examples enlightened non-Christians about the unknown religion of