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.