Dante finished writing The Divine Comedy in 1321 shortly before his death. The subject of the final talk in my course on Dante’s Florence was The Divine Comedy, its sources, structure, an introduction to some of its characters, concluding with Dante’s legacy in art.

I don’t think that I’ve ever had such a long introduction to a literary work and I’m eager now to actually read The Divine Comedy. My copy is the Oxford World’s Classics publication. It is 741 pages long, including several introductory essays with plans and maps, and copious notes. I also have the much shorter The Descent Into Hell translated by Dorothy L Sayers. This is only 130 pages and contains extracts from the Inferno (the first part of The Divine Comedy).

Dante’s first title for this was The Vision. He wrote it in Italian, not Latin, so that it was accessible for everyone. It was recited and is basically a sermon, a sacred poem. He changed the title to comedy, which in the ancient tradition was a story, beginning as tragedy and moving to a happy ending. Boccaccio added Divine to the title in the 14th century. It’s an epic, allegorical poem and also an historical chronicle of Dante’s time packed with information on topics such as politics, theology, geography, the arts, and love.

It depicts three regions of the dead – Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise – a journey through the spiritual realms. There are 100 cantos, written in third rhyme – terza rima, invented by Dante, ie the first and third lines rhyme, with the second line indicating the next rhyme. This is an aid to memory and also helps to move the narrative forward. It’s packed with imagery, with multiple meanings and although it includes contemporary characters it’s amazingly modern. Florence is depicted as hell, with the Pope, Boniface VIII and clerics condemned because of the corrupt state of the church, although Dante describes meeting Christian theological thinkers in Paradise.

Dante used many sources, including the Bible, Greek mythology, Roman history, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Livy, legends, miracle and medieval morality plays and his own stories. The poem begins with an exciting episode at the gates to the underworld in a dark, confusing wood, symbolising doubt, sin and the sterility of the soul. Dante, the narrator, has lost the path and is guided by Virgil through Hell and Purgatory to Paradise, where he meets his beloved Beatrice, who guides him through Heaven. Paradiso is the place of perfect harmony ordained by God. Dante followed the Ptolemaic system of the Cosmos in which Earth is the centre of the universe. He placed Hell at the centre of the Earth, underneath Jerusalem, reached through nine different circles, containing sinners suffering terrible punishments and torture. Purgatory was somewhere in the southern hemisphere, ascending up to Paradise located in Heaven above the Earth.

There are about 600 characters in the whole poem, 250 from the classical era, 80 from the Bible and 250 from Dante’s own time. Dante admired Virgil, his guide through Hell and Purgatory. He describes him as that fount of splendour, symbolising human reason and wisdom. Amongst the many characters are Brunetto Latini, Dante’s mentor who took an active role in politics and the art of oratory, found in Hell because of the sin of sodomy, which was considered as violence against nature; and Farinata degli Uberti, the leader of the Ghybelline party, also found in Hell as punishment for heresy because he was an Epicurean believing that the soul died with the body. He rises from the burning tomb of heretics to speak to Dante. The first mention of Florence is from Ciacco, guilty of the sin of gluttony, when he refers the bloodshed between the citizens of ‘the divided city‘.