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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A five page work looking at Boccaccio's 'Decameron' and Dante's 'Divine Comedy' in terms of the way they illustrate the transformation of attitudes toward sexuality and sin as Western society moved from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance during the fourteenth century. No additional sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_KBdante5.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
have moved from a society obsessed by its relationship to God to a society just as fascinated by the natural relationship of its members to one another. Seen against this
backdrop, it is illuminating to contrast the view of nature, gender and sin depicted in Dantes Divine Comedy -- which is very medieval in outlook -- with Boccaccios Decameron, written
only a few years later. Although it would be absurd to say that Dantes Divine Comedy is autobiographical (it is clear that Dante did not go to a literal
Hell and literally meet the ghost of Virgil, for example), it clearly reflects a number of inner turmoils the poet was experiencing in the early 1300s when the poem was
written. One of these turmoils had to do with the death of the woman he had loved from afar, Beatrice Portinari, as well as the fact that he had been
exiled from his home city of Florence as a result of falling into political disfavor. When he began the Divine Comedy, he clearly had come to a low point in
his life -- the "shadowed forest" of the second line -- and he felt that he had "lost the path that does not stray" (Dante, Inferno, I, 2-3). The Divine
Comedy reflects an effort to find a spiritual solution to that dilemma. Dante wrote this work -- or, in the language of the poem, undertakes this journey -- originally as
a result of meditating on and grieving over, the departed Beatrice. His desire to again see her beauty and feel her radiance sparks his journey and his long and difficult
process of spiritual rebirth. During the poem, Dante realizes that in loving Beatrice, Dante really loved the Godliness she reflected, so his search for Beatrice becomes a search for God.
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