Dante alighieri 2
Dante alighieri 2Dante’s Influence on Italian Culture
Dante Alighieri was a very well known and influential poet in early literature. “He was not only a poet, he was also a philosophical thinker, an active politician, and a religious visionary” (Holmes 1). Dante was born in Florence in 1265, into the Guelph political party, one of the two main parties in Florence. The Guelphs were aristocrats and nobles. They supported the church and papacy and were against the Renaissance. Their opposition was the Ghibellini Party who consisted of the rising merchant class. They supported the emperor and wanted to gain power from the pope (Holmes 22). During his earlier years Dante was neutral politically, but he eventually rose to become a high political figure in the Florentine government. He joined the White Guelphs, who split from the Black Guelphs. When the Blacks took over, Dante was banished from political office and exiled from Florence (Parish Internet). His life changed drastically during his exile, enabling him to concentrate on his writing.
Dante was one of the most influential individuals in early European literature, language, and politics. He influenced Italian society and culture through his poetry and his prose (Dante Internet). His writings helped to unify the Italian language. His opinions on politics were new and many of his ideas are seen in today’s politics (Holmes 23). These are the three key areas in which Dante was so influential.
Dante’s writings had a great impact on Italian literature, both in the nature of the topics and the style of the prose. His writings have been hailed “the pillars on which the European literary tradition has been built” (Dante: The Divine… Internet). The Divine Comedy is very influential and is considered as the greatest piece of poetry in early European literature. “Dante’s Divine Comedy has rightly been regarded as the supreme literary expression of a crucial stage in European thought” (Holmes 1). Dante also influenced the style of poetry by introducing a format that consisted of three canticles each divided into 33 or 34 cantos. Many poets after him have copied this format (Wilkins 12).
His most famous piece of literature, The Divine Comedy, is said to be important also because of “It’s place in the history of the development of the Italian language” (Dante: The Divine… Internet). To understand this we need to look at the language and writings at that time in history. During Dante’s lifetime different dialects of Italian were spoken in different parts of the country (Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321 Internet). Dante was a very skilled writer who wrote in both his Florentine Italian dialect and Latin, which was unusual since most scholarly writings at that...
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