The Journey In Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy

In 1302 Dante Alighieri is banished from Florence, the city of his birth, after backing the losing side, an opposing family, during conflicts and civil unrest as well as other for other political reasons. It 's during his banishment and left wandering around the Italian countryside that he composes his most well known work of literature, The Divine Comedy, an epic poem. In the first volume of poem, Inferno, Dante still finds himself as a wanderer but now wandering through a different landscape. Slowly but steadily, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, Dante begins wandering physically down the steep descent into Hell or "Inferno" as the title of his first poem suggests. The journey in Dante 's poem is much more than just his physical journey into …show more content…
Dante Alighieri wrote his poem, The Divine Comedy, near the middle of his life, a time where Dante might have been questioning his morality and his afterlife. A time in their life when any medieval Christian would begin to question their life, morality, and impending afterlife. He alludes to finding himself "...within a forest dark / For the straightforward pathway had been lost", the path blurred between enlightenment (the straightforward path) and damnation (forest dark). Dante 's use of "our life" shows us that he acknowledges his journey is not unique to his own self. That this a journey that everyone, or every Christian at the time, must have take into consideration. This struggle (journey) of finding grace and enlightenment (the straightforward path) in way of damnation and sin (forest dark). And even though he fears Hell, Dante knows he must endure the path through it to reach Heaven. Much like how medieval Christians would have to had struggled by facing sin daily to reach enlightenment under the watchful eye of …show more content…
The idea that everything that exists has a divinely planned order according to and in accordance with God. A sort of ladder/chain where God resides above everything and everyone, then Angels, Humans, etc. downward all the way to Satan at the very last level of Hell and the center of the Earth. This idea is seen in Dante 's poem, not just physically, but through the severity of each sin committed and its place in Hell. Where the first level of Hell is for who still dammed it 's also nearest to Earth and Heaven. Here the unbaptized and virtuous Pagans merely committed the sin of not accepting Christ. Whereas the further you travel down the chain you find more severe and serve punishments. Allegorically, the "Great Chain of Being" is represented in Inferno through Hell and its residents by their sin. The more humane, and human, sins reside closest to Heaven within Hell while the more inhumane and ungodly sinners reside as far away from Heaven as physically possible seen by the medieval Christian