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Understanding Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy

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Well-traveled people are known to tell stories of their adventures. Travelers will describe the highs and lows of their adventures and encourage or discourage their listeners to either attempt the journey or avoid it altogether. In Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (approximately 1317-1321), Dante he casts himself as an ordinary, sinful, distracted wanderer. Making his story relatable to the common person, Dante grabs his fellow travelers by the hand and has them follow him on his journey through the three areas of afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. In sometimes-graphic detail, he describes these places and what can be expected in each level. Dante wants his fellow humans to avoid the eternal effects of sin. In order to assist those around him, he recounts his tale of falling from God’s grace and finding redemption in order to help others from being slaves to their poor choices. Dante believed that men choose …show more content…
He was raised in a humble family. His mother died when he was young, and his father died a few years later. He ended up being raised by his stepmother. As a young child, he was introduced to the lovely Beatrice, whom he didn’t marry, but loved from afar. He uses this unrequited love in his tale, Divine Comedy, as the reason for being saved from his base life. As Dante aged, he became very involved in politics. On false charges of fraud and corruption, and conspiracy against the Pope, Dante was cast out of Florence, Italy. After being exiled, Dante wandered the Italian countryside. Little else is known of what he did at this time. His exile helped him to relate to the everyday man because he was one them. As he watched men and women, and heard of the consequences of their actions or inaction, he seemed compelled to impart wisdom to them, much as Christ did with His parables. His exile from Florence helped him to produce his greatest work, The Divine

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