If scholars were to attempt to pinpoint the exact moment when Dante’s stance on Italian politics shifted towards a more distressed and discouraged perspective, his exile from Florence would be that moment. In his own words through the mouth-piece of Dante the pilgrim to his former teacher Brunetto Latini in Canto XV, Dante laments:
“In the bright life above…I came into a valley and lost my way, before my age had reached its ripening time. I turned my back on the place but yesterday…”
Through his time in the Florentine political sphere, Dante was no stranger to the severity of this sentence, having voted to exile fifteen prominent politicians just two years before his own exile. At best, as argued by Guy P. Raffa in his article “Dante’s Poetics …show more content…
Supplemental to Dante’s mindful response was, as Guy P. Raffa notes, an experience for Dante where he learned to “embrace and promote a world as difficult as it is essential to imagine,” through the conflicted, and often irreconcilable emotions that emerged from his exile – righteous anger and nostalgic affection. In the aftermath of his exile, Dante chose to shift his political message to the intent of warning fellow Italians to recognize the dangers that accompany a city’s inadequacy to rid itself of various forms of strife. Dante was not, as A. P. d ’Entrèves expresses in Dante as a Political Thinker, a passive victim to his misfortune; while he never got to visit Florence again he would instead discover Italy, undoubtedly shaping his ever-changing political view on humanity and the role of sin within it. It can be argued that Dante the author’s journey into exile began when he entered the Florentine political sphere, where every decision and stance he made would influence his enemies to plot his demise. Dante’s poetic reflection of exile used the characters within the Inferno to highlight the hardships and punishments associated with banishment, and paralleled Dante the pilgrim’s representative exile with Dante the author’s real
“In the bright life above…I came into a valley and lost my way, before my age had reached its ripening time. I turned my back on the place but yesterday…”
Through his time in the Florentine political sphere, Dante was no stranger to the severity of this sentence, having voted to exile fifteen prominent politicians just two years before his own exile. At best, as argued by Guy P. Raffa in his article “Dante’s Poetics …show more content…
Supplemental to Dante’s mindful response was, as Guy P. Raffa notes, an experience for Dante where he learned to “embrace and promote a world as difficult as it is essential to imagine,” through the conflicted, and often irreconcilable emotions that emerged from his exile – righteous anger and nostalgic affection. In the aftermath of his exile, Dante chose to shift his political message to the intent of warning fellow Italians to recognize the dangers that accompany a city’s inadequacy to rid itself of various forms of strife. Dante was not, as A. P. d ’Entrèves expresses in Dante as a Political Thinker, a passive victim to his misfortune; while he never got to visit Florence again he would instead discover Italy, undoubtedly shaping his ever-changing political view on humanity and the role of sin within it. It can be argued that Dante the author’s journey into exile began when he entered the Florentine political sphere, where every decision and stance he made would influence his enemies to plot his demise. Dante’s poetic reflection of exile used the characters within the Inferno to highlight the hardships and punishments associated with banishment, and paralleled Dante the pilgrim’s representative exile with Dante the author’s real