Dante, Rome (Athens), Jerusalem, and Amor
Dante, Rome (Athens), Jerusalem, and Amor
This chapter takes a look at Dante and the Divine Comedy, a work that is regarded as one of the greatest poems of all time—right next to the works of Homer and Shakespeare. Looking at Dante's epic in its larger context, however, it is seen that his intellectual project was to bring together three powerful traditions. First, he renewed the synthesis of the Athens–Jerusalem tension on a vast scale—bringing together the likes of Virgil and Augustine, Cicero and Aquinas. At the same time he also added a third element: the so-called religion of Love, the religion of Amor which had become popular and widespread throughout eleventh-century Europe. The chapter thus examines and analyzes Dante's epic, his interiorizing of the heroic and his making it the ideal of inner perfection.
Keywords: Dante, Divine Comedy, Homer, Shakespeare, Athens-Jerusalem tension, Virgil, Augustine, Cicero, Aquinas
Yale Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
