Political and Religious Motivations in Dante Alighieri’s...

I: Introduction For many years Dante Alighieri’s epic poem the Divine Comedia has been known as a work born from his religious perspective and internal conflict of faith. Many have suggested that he wrote the text to share his perspective of Christianity with the world. However, beyond religious implications, Dante sought just as equally, if not more so, to share his political philosophy and the agony inspired by some of the political occurrences in his life with the world. It is important, then, to consider the following question: to what extent is Dante’s Inferno a politically motivated text rather than a religious one? Alighieri’s epic, particularly Inferno, is not solely a religious text, as it has been thought of by so many for so many years, but rather is an allegorical political text. This can be seen most clearly in the first three cantos of the Inferno, though it is also present in the rest of the poem. The first three cantos will be the most focused up on here, supplemented with substance from the next seven as well. As one of the most influential works of literature ever written, arguably the most influential religious works ever written (aside from religious foundational texts such as the Bible and the Qur’an), and one of the most widely-known epics ever written, it is necessary that the world strives to gain a complete understanding of what the author’s true purpose is, and thus what the true intended contribution of the work is as well. As one of the six