Dante's Divine Comedy - Essay Example

Throughout the text, Dante implements a staggering amount of allegories and figurative language in establishing a text that has withstood centuries of cultural change and intellectual progress. This essay examines Dante’s Divine Comedy in relation to its implementation of a variety of literary techniques. Dante’s Divine Comedy begins with the Inferno. Dante structures this with an overarching narrative that helps situate the text. Related in allegorical form the text begins with the narrator walking along a path.

The narrator states, “Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself/ In dark woods, the right road lost” (I, 1-2). These are seminal lines in the text and while they speak to the specific narrative, more specifically they relate to the broader allegorical concerns with the individuals life path. Dante’s use of language in these lines further attests to his exploration of religious themes, as the ‘right road’ has a specific relation to moral concerns that are reminiscent of religion.

One also considers that these lines have significance even in contemporary literature; in these regards, Robert Frost also prominently made use of such a metaphor in his ‘Road Not Taken’ poem (Hede). . He writes, “through me you enter into the city of woes/ through me you enter into eternal pain,/ through me you enter the population of loss/ abandon all hope, you who enter here” (III, 1-7). These lines are ascribed on the gates of Hell. There is significance in these texts for a variety of reasons.

One recognizes that the path or road metaphor that was established in the earlier in the work is continued in this instance, even when applied to the sordid gates of hell. Perhaps more significantly from the context of purely examining literature are the bounded phenomenon with which Dante establishes the notion of Hell. Of course Dante’s articulation of Hell is influenced more from then pervading Medieval Period perspectives on the subject than of his own literary creation. Still, these articulations are significant as they demonstrate that these perspectives considered Hell as an endpoint with no hope and eternal pain.

As Dante further advances on his path he recognizes comes to speak to other souls in the Inferno. One such prominent consideration occurs when Dante encounters Francesca. Francesca tells Dante how she ended up in Hell, “. . . One day, for pleasure,/ We read of Lancelot, by love constrained:/ Alone, suspecting nothing, at our leisure. . ./ And so was he who wrote it; that day we read. . .No further. . . . “ (V, 112-124). While these lines lack the allegorical significance of the early quotes, they are equally seminal in the pantheon of criticism on Dante’s text.

The literal meaning of these lines refers to how Francesca and her lover were reading about Lancelot and in it recognized their own passionate love, which led to them kissing each other; this kissing led to her husband killing them both before