Going to Hell

Some Notes on Dante’s Hell / Inferno

Dante

Perhaps the figure that best typifies the transition of the Middle Ages to the European Renaissance is the Italian poet, and all round man of letters Dante Alighieri (1265?-1321)1. Dante’s life even covers the period in which the high Middle Ages in Europe gave way to the Italian Renaissance Dante’s great work The Divine Comedy, captures that transition almost perfectly for it is a work that is suffused with the other worldly spirit of the Middle Ages, in other words it is thoroughly Christian yet the “new” learning is beginning to affect the perceptions of men and their relationships with each other and the world.