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The Dream in Purgatorio IX Dante Alighier

Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, written between 1308 and the year of his death in 1321 is considered the greatest epic poem in Italian literature. This Christian allegory about the soul's journey through the afterlife bridges the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, and has had a profound influence on both Western literature and Christian dogma (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante's_Inferno).

Dante describes his journey through the land of the dead in a first person narrative written in terza rima (lines of eleven syllables with a strict rhyme scheme) consisting of the Inferno (Hell), the Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise). Accompanied by the Roman poet Virgil in the first two books, and his idealized perfect woman Beatrice in the last, Dante reveals a fantasmagoric underworld landscape peopled by sinners from the classical world of Greek and Roman history and myth, as well as contemporary figures from his own day.

Filled with numerology, elaborate symbolism, and references obscure to our modern minds, his work requires scholarly commentary to be understood, although the universality and timelessness of his psychological portraits remains vivid and relevant to this day.

At the beginning of the Purgatorio Virgil and Dante have just left Hell and are beginning their long ascent up the mountain to the gates of Purgatory. In Canto IX Dante falls asleep and dreams he is being carried up to the sphere of fire by an eagle. He awakens in terror from the imagined heat, only to be reassured by Virgil that he has reached the summit of the mountain where the gates of Purgatory await them.

Lucia, the benevolent female character who in the beginning of the Inferno arranges for him to be guided through the underworld first by Virgil and then by Beatrice, has carried him up the steep summit while he slept. Both the dream and Lucia's helping hand involve ascending, which mirrors the soul's aspiration for salvation. To be sa...

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The Dream in Purgatorio IX Dante Alighier. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:41, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705406.html