1. The Divine Comedy Assistant Professor Sandrine Bertaux
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy
Assistant Professor Sandrine Bertaux

2. Dante’s Commedia The Divine Comedy:
-A Christian poem in the vernacular (Tuscan language)
three cantiche- Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio) and Heaven or Paradise (Paradiso)-
-An instant classic
-original title: Commedia, 16th century onwards, the Divine Comedy.
A comedy: Happy ending, paradise.

3. Dante Alighieri,

4. Outline of the Lecture Dante Alighieri: From Politics to Exile
Christianity: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise
Why Virgil as a guide?

5. From Exile to Politics Canto 1 1302 Dante in exile
“Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
For I had wandered off from the straight path.”
1302 Dante in exile
The White and the Black Guelfs
A decade to write; a journey in one week’s time.

7. Hell, Purgatory and Heaven
Judaism: a monistic other world, sheol
Roman dualism: Hades (terror) and Elysian Fields (happiness)
Christianity: Contrast Hell and Heaven
Invention of the Purgatory as a “third place”: fully incorporated in the 12th c.
Incompatible with reincarnation and metempsychosis (Hinduism or Catharism 12-14c).

9. Botticelli’s Hell

10. Botticelli’s Hell

11. Purgatory, a mountain-island: the 7 sins

12. The Virgil Question
The Divine Comedy raises many questions; one of them being why did Dante the poet choose a pagan guide to lead Dante the Pilgrim in Hell and in the Purgatory? (Beatrice in Paradise)
Virgil predicted the advent of the Christ
Virgil an allegory of Reason (Beatrice as Faith)
Virgil the model of poetry
Virgil the poet praising Augustus

13. Virgil as a teacher
“I was born… lived in Rome when good Augustus reigned,
when still the false and lying gods were worshipped.
I was a poet and sang that just man,
Son of Anchises, who sailed off from Troy
After the burning of proud Ilium.”
“You are my teacher, the first of all my authors,
And you alone the one from whom I took
The noble style that was to bring me honor.”

14. “Be joyful, Florence, since you are so great
De Monarchia: D. advocates imperial rule as opposed to political factions and the pope’s political interventions (on the Index list of banned books by the Church).
“Be joyful, Florence, since you are so great
that your outstretched wings beat over land and sea,
and your name is spread throughout the realm of Hell!
I was ashamed to find among the thieves
Five of your most eminent citizens,
A fact which does you very little honor.”
Original title: The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine by Citizenship, not by Morals”.