Dante 2
Dante 2Dante's Influences
Through out the course of literature, various authors utilize their own past experiences and histories to enhance the plot of their works. Anything from their childhood to a random person that they meet on the street can create a spark that will create a character or a thought in a piece of literature. Dante's environment was full of people and events that could have influenced his writings. In the Inferno Dante's perception of hell is heavily influenced by the people in his life both directly and indirectly. The Provencal love-cult, Beatrice, and Boniface VIII most heavily influenced Dante in his writing.
The Provencal love-cult, a school of poets started by William of Poitou, heavily influenced Dante in his early poetry(Smith 18). Provencal literature was very unique and technically complex(Smith 18), "it was concerned with the worship of the idealized woman (usually married, and therefore theoretically unattainable), involving much sorrow and torment to the lover, not unmixed, with pride"(Smith 18). This was the basis for the linked rhyme scheme of the Inferno. Dante was fascinated by Arnaut Daniel's "cult of the word and his veritable obsession with technique"(Smith 19). The Sicilian School, a refinement of the Provencal, had "significant linguistic effect upon his contemporaries" (Smith 20). Giacomo Lentini, inventor of the sonnet, was a prominent poet in this school along with Cecco Angiolieri and Cino da Pistoia who heavily influenced Dante. These two contemporaries, like Dante, wrote about female idolatry. They gave special attention "to gracefulness of expression"(Smith 20), as displayed in Vita Nuova where "Dolce stil nuovo"(Smith 20). Smith defines Dolce stil nuovo as being the will that directs the lover's intellect towards the true adoration of beauty that resides the lover's happiness(Smith 20). Smith also adds that Love is said to rise from its sensual origins to a realm of purity, where it blends with the divine. Even though the Provencal school vanished by the time Dante started writing its messages and influences, they affected him immensely.
Historians know little about Dante's beloved Beatrice: she seemed to be the perfect women in the eyes of Dante, but not the only woman in his life. He seemed to have a very promiscuous life in his youth; he married Gemma Donati, allegedly a hard-hearted woman. While he had other relations with other women, he often pronounced his love for Beatrice. "She was his first and his last real love"(Smith 24). "It was she who opened that perennial fountain of love which welled up forever within his heart, and gave inspiration to his pen"(Smith 24). He had put her on a pedestal and made her the ideal of womanhood. "He believed that only by living as he thought she would want him to live could he hope to be fit one day to enter Paradise"(Smith 24). Beatrice can be looked at as almost being...
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