Divina+Commedia

= = THE DIVINA COMMEDIA The "Divina Commedia", written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is considered the central poem of Italian literature and the best literal expression of medieval culture. The original title of the work was simply Commedia, because it indicated the literary genre of the work, but later Giovanni Boccaccio, the author of the Decameron, suggested adding the adjective "Divina" in order both to explain the kind of content the work portrayed and to celebrate the greatness of it. To write his "Divina Commedia", Dante inspired himself to some models, which have been identified in the Bible and the Virgil's "Aeneid". Basically, Dante modified Virgil’s pagan vision of after-life, according it to the religious dogmas of the Bible and the result is a typical medieval vision of the cosmos. The Divina Commedia is a sort of travel, indeed, it is the description of Dante’s travel through the three realms of the dead: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The main protagonists of this travel are three. The first one is Dante himself, symbol of the whole mankind. The second one is Virgil, symbol of human reason. He’s Dante’s guide through Inferno and Purgatorio. The third is Beatrice, a woman loved by Dante during his life, who guides him through Paradiso.The travel lasts seven days and begins in 1300. The poem is divided into three canticas each one representing a realm: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso; the Commedia is composed by 100 cantos, and each book is composed by 33 cantos, except for the Inferno, which has 34 cantos (it has one addictional canto because the first is a general introduction to the poem). The cantos are composed by triplets, rhyming with an ABABCBC... scheme and each verse is 11 syllables long. Dante was a real religous person, and his religous culture can widely be seen in his poem. It is said that Dante decided to write "The Divina Commedia" to let people know that a renew for everybody was necessary in order to get ready for the after-life.