Dante For Beginners

238 Pages·2011·16.55 MB·English

by  Lee

For Beginners LLC
155 Main Street, Suite 201
Danbury, CT 06810 USA
www.forbeginnersbooks.com
Text and Illustrations ©2011 Joe Lee All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
A For Beginners® Documentary Comic Book
Copyright © 2011
Cataloging-in-Publication information is available from the Library of Congress.
eISBN: 978-1-93438968-3
For Beginners® and Beginners Documentary Comic Books® are published by For Beginners LLC.
v3.1
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
1. Florence and the World of the Late Thirteenth Century
2. [Dante’s] Childhood and Youth
3. Manhood
4. Exile
5. La Divina Commedia
A. Inferno
B. Purgatorio
C. Paradiso
6. Finito
7. Bibliography
About the Author

• He had the face of the “Wicked Witch of the West,” and by some
reports, the imperious disposition to match.
• He was a failed politician in his own city, and was exiled for his pains.
• He claimed a lifelong love for a woman with whom he may have
exchanged only a few sentences, and more often than not, she treated
him with disdain.
• He was born 700 years ago in a world fraught with petty but tragic
intrigue, common brutality, and horrendous inquisition, all performed
at the whim of both a church and state that met with his approval.
• He was a poet whose greatest work was written in his own vulgar
tongue, a language he believed would be made the common speech of
an all-encompassing European Empire. It was finished almost literally
on his deathbed, and could not have been read in its entirety during
his lifetime, so why should anyone care to read it, or about him, now?
• Why? Because he was Dante Aligheri, the greatest tourist (even if the
tour was only a literary fantasy) this world and the next has ever
known and, when one sees past the prurient and horribly satisfying
grotesqueries of his sojourn in the inferno, he is, and will forever be,
the great poet, the prophet, the visionary champion of love.

Love was certainly the one thing that thirteenth century
LOVE!
Europe could have used a little of. Let it be said that this
was neither the best of times, nor the worst of times—it was a time of
transition. Commerce was on the rise, pushing out the ancient regime:
the feudal system. Wealth was becoming the standard of power, and
those that claimed their titles from a higher power were not pleased to
have upstarts stinking of savvy and lucre taking over. This struggle was
becoming particularly pointed in the northern half of Italy.
Geographically, Venetia, Tuscany, Lombardy, Emilia, Romagna, and the
other regions were perfectly located at the crossroads of trade between
north and south, east and west. Cities like Venice that might have been
nothing more than fever smitten backwaters were thriving, prospering
bastions of the new capitalism.
No longer would populations depend on fertile farmland or abundant
fisheries for their feed. Trade in silk, perfumes, and every other
commodity that might be desired could put ample quantities of food on