Dante as a humanist
Discuss Dante?s early contribution to the Humanist era, focusing on his use of Virgil in Cantos I-IV and the use of the vernacular in the Divine Comedy.Dante Alighieri is not considered a Renaissance Humanist, however he is considered one of the three crowns of Florentine literature, alongside Petrarco and Boccaccio. Petrarco is reputed as being the fore-runner of Humanism, whereas Dante gave Florentine Italian to the people of Italy and was a key leader in making vulgar Italian an acceptable means of Literature and Rhetoric. Dante also studied and revered many poets and philosophers of antiquity and used them in the Divine Comedy. Virgil was in fact chosen by Dante to be his guide through the Inferno. He was also interested in reason and virtue and the development of the individual. For these reasons, Dante?s style exhibits many precursors, if not aspects of later humanistic thought. In this essay, I will define Humanism and its qualities and I will discuss Dante as an ante-litteram Humanist, focusing on the language he uses in the Divine Comedy and his relationship with Virgil in the first four Cantos. It is my obligation to inform you, in the first place, that Dante was not a Humanist and belongs to the Late Medieval peri
However, unlike typical Medieval view, he did not see earthly life as a period of trial and suffering, an unpleasant but necessary preparation for the after-life where alone man could expect to enjoy happiness. Apart from the idea that Dante?s bests worked were written in the vernacular, it also meant that future members of Humanist society were able to read his works. It seemed inconceivable to him that he and mankind in general should not have been intended to develop to the fullest of their human potential. Heiric, for example, a classical philologist in the 8th Century AD, transmissed a number of classical texts and these were to provide Italian Humanists with primary material for their recovery of the classics. ? However, Dante notion of linguistic evolution were advanced and again made a significant contribution to Humanist thinking and the Florentine Debate of 1435. This gives a strong case towards why Dante?s Divine Comedy was able to contribute to the Humanist era, and eras continuing up to the present day. In his criticism of the church and empire and his reworking of Christian doctrine, Dante ushered in a new era of intellectual endeavour. It cannot be separated from the Middle Ages, as the attitude is clearly medieval in that the reasoning is scholastic and the learning and mysticism are those of Dante?s time. The Divine Comedy is also a political work and indicative of the emergence of humanism was the larger role that Dante provided for the humane arts in ordering earthly and spiritual matters. Petrarco was the principle fore-runner of the rebirth of humanitas, or Humanism as it came to be called and the term umanista was used in the 1400s to describe a professor or student of classical literature. Even though Dante was lacking in historical perspective and did not contribute to the study of perfecting the Latin language, as many Humanists did, he nonetheless gave birth to the vernacular as an acceptable means of sophisticated communication, an argument that was to be accepted by Renaissance Humanists. Dante?proto-humanist? The problem with Dante was that he had all the potential to be an outstanding Humanist. ?Tu se? lo mio maestro e ?l mio autore; tu se? solo colui da cu? io tolsi lo bello stilo che m?ha fatto onore. od in a class of his own as a moral and social philosopher, a Politician, a classical enthusiast, a Linguist and a Poet. Having discussed the linguistic contributions Dante made to the Humanist period, let us now concentrate on the Divine Comedy (c.
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