Throughout the 13th and 14th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church played a substantial influence on people which affected their everyday lives. Religion became involved in every political, economical, and social facet of life. Dante Alighieri who was a writer at the time was not able to escape its control.
After reading Dante Alighieri's Inferno, I felt Dante was misunderstood, a man before his time if you will, and that a deeper understanding of Dante himself was needed to be able to describe why he chose hell as a backdrop for attacking political and personal enemies rather than attacking them head on. Dante is a perfect example of what we know today as the separation of Church and State. He saw the church as corrupt, having too much power, and that it was too involved regarding affairs with politics and the government. Dante was involved in politics himself within Italy and was in a position to see just how much the church affected political affairs. …show more content…
I felt like Canto V (2nd Circle of Hell) demonstrated Dante's passion for using literature as a mode of influencing his readers. I love Canto V because it paints a picture in your head of a romantic story which is eventually consumed with sin and suffering. Not that I like sin and suffering (I don't), but Dante's mastery of love poetry is astounding. Canto V is a romantic love story in which a woman named Francesca tells about how she fell secretly in love with another man outside of marriage. Towards the end of Canto V Dante explains that the lovers were reading a book which coincided with their affair: "Full many time our eyes together grew. That reading, and drove the colour from our faces...This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it, that day no father did we read therein." (Overton
After reading Dante Alighieri's Inferno, I felt Dante was misunderstood, a man before his time if you will, and that a deeper understanding of Dante himself was needed to be able to describe why he chose hell as a backdrop for attacking political and personal enemies rather than attacking them head on. Dante is a perfect example of what we know today as the separation of Church and State. He saw the church as corrupt, having too much power, and that it was too involved regarding affairs with politics and the government. Dante was involved in politics himself within Italy and was in a position to see just how much the church affected political affairs. …show more content…
I felt like Canto V (2nd Circle of Hell) demonstrated Dante's passion for using literature as a mode of influencing his readers. I love Canto V because it paints a picture in your head of a romantic story which is eventually consumed with sin and suffering. Not that I like sin and suffering (I don't), but Dante's mastery of love poetry is astounding. Canto V is a romantic love story in which a woman named Francesca tells about how she fell secretly in love with another man outside of marriage. Towards the end of Canto V Dante explains that the lovers were reading a book which coincided with their affair: "Full many time our eyes together grew. That reading, and drove the colour from our faces...This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it, that day no father did we read therein." (Overton