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Fortune Within The Divine Comedy By Dante Alighieri

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Fortune Within The Divine Comedy By Dante Alighieri
Analysis Of Fortune Within The Divine Comedy By Dante Alighieri

Krishen Gosine
Dr. Patricia Brake Rutenberg
History 241/Development of Western Civilization
30 October 2014

Gosine 2

Krishen Gosine

History 241

Dr. Patricia Brake Rutenberg

27 October 2014

Within the literary masterpiece of the Divine Comedy, by Italian poet Dante’ Alighieri, many scholars have devoted much time and effort into proposing an interpretation for the allegorical analysis of placing Dante’s work in the historical context of Florence, Italy from political, economic, and social perspectives. This work is riddled with many themes, motifs, and symbols taken from the time period, along with many historical references. Of these, Dante’ refers to the paradigm of Fortuna in Canto VII. Fortune is a characteristic that many poets and philosophers have utilized to account for the element of indeterminateness within the universe (Function and Fortune. 1947).
Dante’s work uses fortune to bring to light some of the issues that were prominent within his time period, specifically among some of the ecclesiastical and political leaders during his lifetime. Overall, Dante’s view of the nature of fortune can be seen as a bestowed asset that should …show more content…
It is a prominent topic to mention within medieval texts, as can be seen in the writings of Boethius and Machiavelli (Function and Fortune. 1947) In his work, he personifies this notion of “fortune” as a female holding a wheel, as the revolutions of the wheel signify the dynamic element of man’s gain and loss of fortune throughout his lifetime. Even though Dante may seem to allude to mythological creatures from the classical underworld as malignant, he also lifts up in a constructive sense a depiction of fortune. The mechanisms of fortune, like the function of divine justice are beyond the capability of human
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