Dante Alighieri is an Italian writer, born in 13th century. His masterpiece is the "Divina Commedia". If you know or you've read this book post comments!![/b]
Do you know Dante Alighieri and his Divina Commedia?
Dante is of course known as The Poet, the way Shakespeare is known as The Bard. I have read the Divine Comedy and I love it. Incidentally, it was his descriptions of Hell that fuel the modern sense of what it is like down there, as there are not a lot of descriptions of Hell in actual scripture. What I found most interesting was comparing his sense of Satan with the very different sense of him in the Puritan writer Milton,s Paradise Lost. What is notable in comparing the two is the way that the Medieval Dante describes Lucifer as this austere and immobile character who does not speak (and humorously has a head of a political figure he personally disliked). Conversely Milton creates a Lucifer who is charismatic and tempts the reader to actually like or admire him. This really displays the difference in the religious mindset of the periods in which these two writers were creating their works. Dante would have seen creating an attractive character out of Lucifer as blasphemous whereas Milton saw it as depicting Satan as a tempting figure as true to form. If you get a chance read Paradise Lost and compare the two. I don't think you would be dissappointed.
"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"!
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