Movers And Shakers: Dante Essay, Research Paper

Movers and Shakers: Dante

Have you ever thought about what comes next? What comes after life? The great Italian poet Dante Alighieri pondered this same question, and over the course of his 56 year life, he would come to change the world, touch lives, and question faith all with the power of his words. For this reason, Dante can be considered one of the greatest poets that the human civilization may have ever seen.

Dante was Born into a Guelph family of decayed nobility in 1265. Many different things happened to Dante on the road to becoming a poet. Dante joined the Florentine cavalry in 1289. While with the cavalry, Dante fell in love with Beatrice, who died the next year. After this he began studying classical philosophy and Proven al poetry. Dante later remarried to Gemma Donati, and had three children. Now that you know how Dante became Dante, it is time to focus on what he did that had such a resounding impact on the world today..

Dante s most recognized work today is the Divine comedy, otherwise known as the Divine Comedy. Not only is it profound in and of itself, it is required reading in English IV. The Divine Comedy is a long vernacular poem in 100 cantos, which is more than 10,000 lines. It recounts the tale of the poet’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and is divided accordingly into three parts. In Hell and Purgatory Dante is guided by Vergil, through Heaven, by Beatrice, for whom the poem is a memorial. The Divine Comedy was the epitome of the medieval views on life, with Dante s own personal twists and quirks. The Divine Comedy pictures a changeless universe ordered by God, and the poem s progression is that of god slowly being revealed to a Pilgrim. There are many different circles of hell, which breaks down mortal sins into different categories. The worst sin that you had committed in your life determined how deep you went. His particular way of describing the afterlife and presenting it to the people of that time and beyond is what made Dante so prominent. The idea that there were different levels of hell caused a minor religious movement, causing many people to reevaluate their own lives; thus changing the course of history by forever changing the way that people thought about the afterlife.

So the next time that you are wondering, what comes next? Go pick up a copy of the divine comedy. It might shake your perception of life and death itself.