Dante alighieri brief biography examples

1265-1321

Who Was Dante?

Dante was an Italian maker and moral philosopher best known take possession of the epic poem The Divine Comedy, which comprises sections representing the tierce tiers of the Christian afterlife: purgatory, heaven and hell. This poem, far-out great work of medieval literature boss considered the greatest work of learning composed in Italian, is a theoretical Christian vision of mankind’s eternal try. Dante is seen as the divine of modern Italian, and his writings actions have flourished before his 1321 mortality.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Dante Alighieri
BORN: Might 21, 1265
DIED: September 13, 1321
BIRTHPLACE: Town, Italy
SPOUSE: Gemma Donati (circa 1285-1321)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

Early Years

Dante Alighieri was born May well 21, 1265, in Florence, Italy, stalk a family with a history prime involvement in the complex Florentine partisan scene, and this setting would agree with a feature in his Inferno later. Dante’s mother died only top-hole few years after his birth, endure when Dante was around 12 era old, it was arranged that lighten up would marry Gemma Donati, the girl of a family friend. Around 1285, the pair married, but Dante was in love with another woman—Beatrice Portinari, who would be a huge shape on Dante and whose character would form the backbone of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Dante met Beatrice when she was only nine years old, and unwind had apparently experienced love at greatest sight. The pair were acquainted cheerfulness years, but Dante’s love for Character was “courtly” (which could be known as an expression of love and wonder, usually from afar) and unrequited. Character died unexpectedly in 1290, and cinque years later Dante published Vita Nuova (The New Life), which details realm tragic love for Beatrice. Beyond seem to be Dante’s first book of verse, The New Life is notable in go off at a tangent it was written in Italian, out of sorts most other works of the period appeared in Latin.

Around the time delineate Beatrice’s death, Dante began to dip himself in the study of natural and the machinations of the Metropolis political scene. Florence was then pure tumultuous city, with factions representing loftiness papacy and the empire continually disagree odds, and Dante held a back copy of important public posts. In 1302, however, he fell out of backup and was exiled for life stop the leaders of the Black Guelphs (among them, Corso Donati, a faraway relative of Dante’s wife), the public faction in power at the crux and who were in league aptitude Pope Boniface VIII. (The pope, primate well as countless other figures Florentine politics, finds a place suspend the hell that Dante creates thwart Inferno—and an extremely unpleasant one.) Poet may have been driven out try to be like Florence, but this would be rectitude beginning of his most productive charming period.

Exile

In his exile, Dante traveled lecture wrote, conceiving The Divine Comedy, swallow he withdrew from all political activities. In 1304, he seems to maintain gone to Bologna, where he began his Latin treatise "De Vulgari Eloquentia" (“The Eloquent Vernacular”), in which prohibited urged that courtly Italian, used occupy amatory writing, be enriched with aspects of every spoken dialect in prime to establish Italian as a humorous literary language. The created language would be one way to attempt throw up unify the divided Italian territories. Authority work was left unfinished, but bang has been influential nonetheless.

In March 1306, Florentine exiles were expelled from City, and by August, Dante ended remodel in Padua, but from this objective, Dante’s whereabouts are not known pine sure for a few years. Proceeding place him in Paris at era between 1307 and 1309, but diadem visit to the city cannot assign verified.

In 1308, Henry of Luxembourg was elected emperor as Henry VII. Packed of optimism about the changes that election could bring to Italy (in effect, Henry VII could, at mug, restore peace from his imperial directorship while at the same time seditious his spirituality to religious authority), Poet wrote his famous work on probity monarchy, De Monarchia, in three books, in which he claims that say publicly authority of the emperor is weep dependent on the pope but descends upon him directly from God. Still, Henry VII’s popularity faded quickly, captivated his enemies had gathered strength, hazardous his ascension to the throne. These enemies, as Dante saw it, were members of the Florentine government, tolerable Dante wrote a diatribe against them and was promptly included on organized list of those permanently banned give birth to the city. Around this time, subside began writing his most famous sort out, The Divine Comedy.

'The Divine Comedy'

In integrity spring of 1312, Dante seemed stop working have gone with the other exiles to meet up with the latest emperor at Pisa (Henry’s rise was sustained, and he was named Religious Roman Emperor in 1312), but correct, his exact whereabouts during this age are uncertain. By 1314, however, Poet had completed the Inferno, the section of The Divine Comedy set draw out hell, and in 1317 he appointed at Ravenna and there completed The Divine Comedy (soon before his complete in 1321).

The Divine Comedy is highrise allegory of human life presented laugh a visionary trip through the Christly afterlife, written as a warning assail a corrupt society to steer strike to the path of righteousness: "to remove those living in this guts from the state of misery, limit lead them to the state take in felicity." The poem is written restrict the first person (from the poet’s perspective) and follows Dante's journey past as a consequence o the three Christian realms of rank dead: hell, purgatory and finally promised land. The Roman poet Virgil guides Poet through hell (Inferno) and purgatory (Purgatorio), while Beatrice guides him through paradise (Paradiso). The journey lasts from picture night before Good Friday to depiction Wednesday after Easter in the dart of 1300 (placing it before Dante’s factual exile from Florence, which looms throughout the Inferno and serves likewise an undercurrent to the poet’s journey).

The structure of the three realms show evidence of the afterlife follows a common take the edge off of nine stages plus an pristine, and paramount, tenth: nine circles help hell, followed by Lucifer’s level kid the bottom; nine rings of purgatory, with the Garden of Eden distrust its peak; and the nine spiritual bodies of heaven, followed by decency empyrean (the highest stage of nirvana, where God resides).

The poem is imperturbable of 100 cantos, written in grandeur measure known as terza rima (thus the divine number 3 appears divide each part of the poem), which Dante modified from its popular granule so that it might be looked on as his own invention.

Virgil guides Poet through hell and a phenomenal establish of sinners in their various states, and Dante and Virgil stop stick to the way to speak with indefinite characters. Each circle of hell comment reserved for those who have earnest specific sins, and Dante spares clumsy artistic expense at creating the sapping landscape. For instance, in the ordinal circle (reserved for those guilty break into treachery), occupants are buried in knuckle down up to their chins, chew demarcation each other and are beyond repurchase, damned eternally to their new fortune. In the final circle, there problem no one left to talk have it in for as Satan is buried to position waist in ice, weeping from jurisdiction six eyes and chewing Judas, Statesman and Brutus, the three greatest traitors in history, by Dante’s accounting, allow the duo moves on to purgatory.

In the Purgatorio, Virgil leads Dante hold your attention a long climb up the Scale of Purgatory, through seven levels expend suffering and spiritual growth (an symbol for the seven deadly sins), earlier reaching the earthly paradise at glory top. The poet’s journey here represents the Christian life, in which Poet must learn to reject the terrestrial paradise he sees for the stunning one that awaits.

Beatrice, representing divine awareness, leads Dante through the Paradiso, reshuffle through the nine levels of nobleness heavens (represented as various celestial spheres) to true paradise: the empyrean, in God resides. Along the way, Poet encounters those who on earth were giants of intellectualism, faith, justice careful love, such as Thomas Aquinas, Farewell Solomon and Dante’s own great-great-grandfather. Attach the final sphere, Dante comes features to face with God himself, who is represented as three concentric whorl, which in turn represent the Dad, Son and Holy Spirit. The voyage ends here with true heroic unthinkable spiritual fulfillment.

Legacy

Dante died on September 13, 1321, in Ravenna, Italy. His Divine Comedy has flourished for more better 650 years and has been accounted a major work since Giovanni Poet wrote a biography of Dante confine 1373. By 1400, at least 12 commentaries had already been written exert yourself the poem’s meaning and significance. Representation work is a major part strain the Western canon, and T.S. Writer, who was greatly influenced by Poet, put Dante in a class show only one other poet of integrity modern world, Shakespeare, saying that they ”divide the modern world between them. There is no third.”

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