Dantes views of chivalry and warfare cantos xii and xxviii
Dantes views of chivalry and warfare - cantos xii and xxviiiThroughout Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the warlike and the social concept behind chivalry is one of intense concern for this author from the Middle Ages. What makes Canto XII so important in terms of understanding Dante's feelings on chivalry and war is that the reader is seeing Dante's views on warfare not only from the perspective of an observer, but from the perspective of a participant. Later in the Inferno, Canto XXVIII proves to be very revealing as Dante directly attacks the views of chivalry and warfare that are held by Bertran de Born, a troubadour poet. The noble, glorious notions associated with chivalry and the Middle Ages were certainly pertinent to warfare in Dante's time, when warfare was a profession - a way of life."[01] With regards to his own involvement in war, Dante, in Canto XII, not only passes judgement on other sinners, but he passes judgement on himself as a member of the cavalry.
It is fitting that Dante chooses to use the canto, the "Violent against their Neighbors," as a metaphor that seeks to explain chivalric warfare. Chiron and his men are described as a massive army, the coming of which is described as such, "between it and the base of the embankment / raced files of Centaurs who were armed with arrows, / as, in the world above, they used to hunt." [02]Their numbers are in the "thousands" (XII, 73 ), and it seems appropriate that Dante chooses the centaurs, a mixture of both man and horse, to represent a medieval army, for during chivalric wars of Medieval times "the man on horse, possessing both military and shock action, was clearly in command."[03]Immediately Dante establishes the framework for this canto as Virgil and he are themselves transformed onto a battlefield. Dante the poet has a personal stake in explaining the foolish irony inherent in the ideas of chivalry The beginning of this canto contains a distinctively emotional, and rather- personal quotation from Dante to the reader, "O blind cupidity and insane anger, / which goad us on so much in our short life, / then steep us in such grief eternally!" W X1E, 49-51 3. Dante lives during a very violent period in history, and maybe it is this chivalric love of warfare, driven by a "blind cupidity" or love for violence, and "insane anger' at the expense of other's lives, that he so detests The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were times during which "They (princes) waged wars of dazzlement, seeking to confound rivals and confirm friends with spectacular displays of gold, silks, and tapestries."[04]The battle at Campaldino, in which Dante took part, was also dominated by the same traits as the old chivalric wars whereby "The man on horse, possessing both mobility and shock actions was clearly in command,"[05]and when "the foot soldier was held generally in low regard."[06]In spite of the fact that Dante recognizes his own involvement in war,...
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