Who Is Dante Alighieri's Inferno?

The novel Inferno was written by Dante Alighieri. Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence, Italy. His family was of reasonable wealth and also had a history of interest in the complex Florentine political scene. He also held number of significant public offices at a time of great political unrest in Italy, and, in 1302, the leaders of Black Guelph’s exiled him for life, Because of this it lead him to write The Comedy. Which is just referred to as The Divine Comedy, and it consists of three different stories: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is about an allegorical journey through Hell. The novel describes what he thinks Hell will be like. Containing many different levels and different types of punishment for each of the sins. The history content of The Comedy is very similar to Dante’s personal life. The story takes place in the late-thirteenth-century in Florence. During this time period the there was a struggle for power, which caused a crisis that affected all of Italy (Bandini, Reviewed Work). Part of this was the struggle between the church and state for temporal authority. Temporal authority is the power of the state or a nation. The pope was the main representative of the church, and the state was the Holy Roman Emperor. These two groups were apart of the Guelph party, which supported

In the year of 1920, the Guelph’s divided into two different fractions. Dante joined the White that means that he supported the independence of Florence from strict papal control (Bandini, Reviewed Work). Then there were the Black Guelph’s who were willing to work with the pope in order to restore their power. The pope was the time was Pope Boniface VII, in 1301 the black Guelph’s later gained control over Florence. That was the same year Dante was exiled from the White’s. After he got exiled he grew to hate Boniface, and even gives him a special place in Hell in the novel. (Alighieri,