Dante Alighieri was born in 1256 in a noble family of minor importance. He lost his parents at an early age, was a versatile student and started writing verse when he was very young. This brought him in contact with poets such as Guido Cavalcante, Lupo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia and Forese Donati.

Dante fell heavily in love with Bice di Folco Portinari, better known as Beatrice, whom he made immortal in his poetry bundle Vita Nova and in his Divina Commedia. In 1300, he was the highest civil officer in Florence, but got more and more involved in intrenal party rivalry. In 1302, he was banned for life from his home town, Florence, because of his failed anti-papal politics.

Dante is not only Italy's greatest poet, but also one of the most elevated world literators. He represented the Italian genius and marks the lighlight of the versatility of Italian medieval civilisation. He lived in an era in which medieval scholastics were giving way more and more to rationalistic ideas (Renaissance).

Dante owes his immortality mainly to his Divina Commedia his poem of 100 chants, in which he describes his journey into Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. His guide in Hell and Purgatory is the ancient poet Virgil, sent to him by the love of his youth and great inspirator, Beatrice. The Divina Commedia is written in Tuscan Italian, a fact which has lead to a tremendous influence of the Tuscan dialect on the Italian language.

The master work is, among other things, a moral allegory. In the beginning, the poet cannot mount the sunlit hill of virtue because of his passions. His guide and mentor Virgil symbolises the wisdom and philosophy, which will make Dante come to his senses, see his sins and makes him undergo the purgatory of repenting his deeds, through which he will find earthly happiness. The only thing that will lead him to eternal beatitude, Paradise, however, is the divine gospel and the church, symbolised by Beatrice herself.

Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)

Publius Vergilius Maro was born in 70 BCE in the village of Andes near Mantua from modest, but well to do parents. His father had worked himself up from a farm aid to a farm owner. Virgil studied in Cremona and Mediolanum (Milan) and came to Rome to complete his education. The land of his parents had been taken away by land reforms, but influential friends saw to it that he could get it back.

By that time (39 BCE), he had drawn the attention with his first bundle of poems, called Eclogae (also called 'Bucolica'). This isa collection of shepherd's songs after the example Theocritos had set in Greek literature. In one of these poems (Ecloga IV), he announces the birth of a Great Leader and a Golden Era; Christians explained this as the announcement of the birth of Christ.

Through Asinius Pollio he got in contact with Maecenas, who enticed and payed him to produce more poetry. In 29 BCE, the Georgica (or 'rural songs')came out, an educational piece about various forms of agriculture. Its purpose was practical, namely to entice the revival of agriculture. The work was based on his own agricultural experience and a broad study of Greek and Latin literature concerning agriculture (Aristotle, Theofrastos, Cato and Varro). Thanks to the poetical value of the Eclogae and the Georgica, Virgil definitely put himself on the map as a famous poet.

Augustus Caesar requested him to start an epos, dealing with the origin, foundation and growth of Rome to undisputed world power, this being the Fatum of the Roman people. He spent the last 10 years of his life to complete this task, which would result in his best poetical performance ever: the Aeneid. Before completing the Aeneid, Virgil made one last trip to Asia Minor, where he met Augustus Caesar and joined him and his party.

On this trip, Virgil, who had a bad health already, fell seriously ill and was forced to travel back to Italy. He hadn't been able to complete the Aeneid and, sorry for this, he asked Augustus' permission for the uncompleted manuscript to be burnt. Augustus did not reply to this request and after Virgil's death, the manuscript was published as it was. On September 21st of 19 BCE, Virgil died, having reached land in Brundisium. His ashes were brought over to Naples and was placed in a grave on the road to Puteoli.

Inferno

The Inferno contains 34 cantos. Canto 1 is the introduction to the Divine Comedy as a whole; it is followed by the 33 cantos of the Inferno proper (Purgatorio and Paradiso are the same length). In canto 1 there are two Dantes: the Poet who occasionally addresses the audience in the present tense, and the fictional Pilgrim, the Dante who was lost in a "dark wood" on Good Friday of the year 1300 (see note p. 116 for this fictional date). Dante's dual roles as poet and fictional character recall the dual roles of Poet and Lover in the Roman de la Rose. The pilgrim Dante is also an Everyman: what God has done for him, He can do for any Christian.

By choosing Virgil as his initial guide within the fiction of the epic journey, Dante implicitly demonstrates his participation in the process of translatio studii. Writing in vernacular Italian, but following the example of his "guide," Virgil, Dante in effect becomes the "new Virgil," producing an epic in vernacular Italian which is as great as Virgil's Latin Aeneid. As such, his work is full of epic conventions which you should be aware of when you read, e.g. the Invocation of the Muses in Inf. 2 (the beginning of the Inferno proper), Purg.1 and Par.1. Another epic convention, the "Descent into the Underworld" (found e.g. in Homer and in Virgil's Aeneid), becomes the subject of the whole of book I, the Inferno. Note in passing the way in which Dante incorporates many aspects of the Underworld described in Greek and Latin mythology into his Christian vision of Hell (e.g. the ferryman Charon; the three-headed dog Cerberus; the rivers Acheron, Styx and Phlegeton; the Furies; Medusa; the centaurs Chiron and Nessus, etc.).

But Dante's epic is not just equal to Virgil's-it surpasses it, since it is a Christian epic (while Virgil's was a Pagan one). Virgil is unable to enter the Earthly Paradise at the top of Mount Purgatory (he disappears after declaring that Dante no longer needs his guidance, Purgatorio xxvi). The heavenly Paradise described in Paradiso is off limits to Virgil, a Pagan (since he died before the birth of Christ; recall that his lifespan was 70-19 B.C.). Nonetheless, Virgil's guidance is part of God's plan. We learn in Canto ii that Dante's beloved Beatrice, his earthly "courtly love interest" in the Vita nuova and the heavenly guide who replaces Virgil at the end of Purgatorio and in Paradiso, came to Hell at the request of St. Lucia (=Light) and the Virgin Mary, to ask Virgil to be Dante's guide. This feminine trinity (see esp. p. 13) is part of God's plan for Dante's salvation.

Links to the "Inferno" and the "Aeneid":

Dante - Divina Commedia Online

P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos liber VI, Latin text of Book 6 of the Aeneid (bibliotheca Augustana)

The Divine Comedy, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Aeneid, Book 6, translated by John Dryden

Dante publications online

On Dante's Divina Commedia, a short analysis, by Diane Thompson, NVCC, ELI

Comparison: Dante's Inferno and Virgil's Aeneid, Book 6, by Ronald R. Dickson

Books and articles about Dante and Virgil: