Dante's Inferno: Dante as Poet and Character and Application Essay

Dante Alighieri is an Italian poet who was admired for his profound view of the spiritual and the range of his intellect. He was known for his works such as La Vita Nuova (The New Life), Convivio (Banquet) and De Vulgari Eloquentia (Concerning the Common Speech). The most interesting perhaps is Dante’s epic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, an allegorical narrative, symbolic of a particular fault or virtue and the punishments or rewards imposed on the personas to illustrate a much deeper sense of truth and universality. But most interesting for me is the fact that Dante used himself as the main character of his greatest work thus resulting to a central implication of the Comedy; Dante’s involvement in “The Comedy” can be seen in two dimensions, Dante as the Poet and Dante as the Character. What I will attempt to do in this paper is to explain the parallels of these two dimensions to more practical aspects of life and to justify why it was essential that Dante incorporates himself inside the world of The Comedy.
Often times, speeches of Dante the poet and Dante the character would coincide but each these two clearly has functions of their own. We would often think that Dante the poet was more of a narrative voice, meaning if the lines push the story forward, then most likely these lines are from Dante the poet such as the case of Canto 1.8-12 (p.3). In these lines he addresses the readers, also stating his main goal as a poet which is to retell the things that he will see as he journeys. Also, to situate himself more clearly, he also states the cause, or at least on his own view, the apparent cause of his current predicament in the woods, which was because he abandoned the true path. This is the main function of a poet; to testify to a succession of events possibly using cause and effect but most importantly clear and comprehendible images using words.
“Logos” is the Greek translation for word and it is no surprise that sensible arguments and thoughts are driven...