He names the people who are suffering in Hell and explains how they got there. Virgil, as the representation of reason, doesn’t let us get bogged down in the horror of what we’re reading.Īs Dante’s intellectual guide, he makes the suffering intelligible. He gets distracted and overstimulated - and reading the gory descriptions, so do we. Unsurprisingly, the character Dante can’t process all the horror that he witnesses in Hell. Intellectual Guidanceĭante paints such a vivid picture of Hell in Inferno that it could make a Stephen King fan shudder.
Virgil keeps putting him back on track, showing how we need wisdom and reason to keep us moving on the journey of self-development. However, Dante gets constantly distracted in his journey. The character of Virgil represents human wisdom and reason.Īs Dante journeys through Hell and Purgatory, his character represents every person who tries to face the suffering of life and make themselves better. However, the Divine Comedy is an allegory: a story in which every element represents something else. In the Divine Comedy, the character Virgil is Dante’s guide and friend who leads him through Hell (in Inferno) and Purgatory (in Purgatorio). That’s why he imagined a friendship with Virgil and placed it at the center of his own epic work. Dante’s political activism got him banished from Florence, and he spent the rest of his life in exile, mourning the loss of his home.Īs an epic poet, loyal Italian, and passionate political commentator, Virgil was Dante’s hero. But Italy was still torn apart by political struggles.ĭante’s beloved city, Florence, was divided by a brutal political feud. (Get to know more of the best epic poems of all time here!)ĭante lived in the thirteenth century, almost fourteen hundred years after Virgil. He addressed that turmoil in The Aeneid, one of the greatest epic poems of all time. That’s because Virgil was everything that Dante wanted to be.Īlthough Virgil lived in Roman times, he was a fellow Italian with Dante. In the Divine Comedy, Dante depicts Virgil as his guide and friend. In real life, Virgil was an inspiration to Dante. In case it wasn't already clear, Dante’s and Virgil’s friendship in the Divine Comedy was entirely fictionalized. You also have to distinguish between Virgil the historical figure and Virgil the fictional character who shows up in the Inferno. When you’re reading Inferno, you have to remember that there is a difference between Dante the author and Dante the character. They never met in real life.ĭante, the author of the Divine Comedy, included himself and Virgil as characters in his epic poem. Here’s where it gets confusing, though: Dante and Virgil lived in different historical eras.
Yes, both Dante and Virgil were real people.
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