James Baquet England has Shakespeare. Spain has Cervantes. Italy has Dante Alighieri, best known by just his first name, “Dante,” but in Italy known as “the Supreme Poet.” His works raised the status of vernacular Italian, and his home dialect became the base of the modern national language. He is best remembered — among his half-dozen or so works — for his unusual epic poem, “The Divine Comedy.” Most epics focus on gods and heroes, but this one portrays an interior, spiritual journey from the depths of hell to the pinnacle of heaven. It is not a “comedy” in the sense of something funny, but in the older, theatrical sense of a story with a happy ending. The work is divided into three parts: “Inferno” (Hell), “Purgatorio” (Purgatory), and “Paradiso” (Paradise or Heaven). It begins with the narrator describing his “mid-life crisis,” stating, “Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark wood, for I had lost the right way.” Though begun around 1308 and completed in 1320, it’s set in 1300, Dante’s 35th year. As the standard lifespan was considered to be 70 years, this should have been literally the “middle of his life” — though in fact he died in 1321, around age 56. Each level of the “Comedy” has 33 “cantos” or stanzas; these 99 plus one introductory make 100. Each level is made up of nine circles, plus an extra making 10. The pilgrim (identified with Dante) is guided by two figures. The Roman poet Virgil (who wrote his own epic, “The Aeneid”), not being a Christian, leads Dante through the “ungodly” levels of Hell and Purgatory. He represents the positive value of human reason. When he reaches Heaven, though, Dante is reunited with a girl named Beatrice (meaning “she who makes happy”). She is a complex figure, based on a girl that Dante met when they were both 9, but withwhom he was never involved. Thus, she remains an idealized vision of romantic and spiritual love. This imaginative vision of the medieval idea of the afterlife is today considered one of the greatest works of world literature. Vocabulary: Which word above means: 1. six 2. person traveling for religious purposes 3. “everyday,” non-literary language 4. sections of a poem 5. held as a form of unreal perfection 6. supposed life after death 7. psychological change at the start of middle age 8. local version of a language 9. high point 10. irreligious, atheistic | 