How Does Dante And Beatrice

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Both Beatrice and Dante’s Virgil guide Dante through his journey in The Divine Comedy. Dante’s Virgil guides Dante through the majority of the book, purgatory and hell, while Beatrice guides Dante through heaven. Both characters are symbols for actual people Dante admired.
Besides The Divine Comedy, Beatrice appears in Dante’s La Vita Nuova. Beatrice is a Florentine woman whom Dante meets in childhood and admires for the rest of his life. Dante never pursues an intimate relationship with Beatrice, but instead precedes in a state of courtly love from afar. Dante’s devotion to Beatrice, a mortal woman, transcends into a religious experience. Dante transfixes Beatrice into a deity and she can “gloriously gaze on the face of” God (Dante XLII).

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