Free How Was Dante Perceived By His Contemporaries? Essay Sample

Durante Degli Alighieri, mostly known as Dante, was a well known poet From Italy during the medieval ages. He made great impacts on the literature and theology and is still remembered for his work, especially ‘The Divine Comedy’. Other than being a poet, Dante was also a writer and a political thinker. Despite of his great works some scholars have disputed him while others really commend him for the work. This paper aims to discuss some of the different opinions that were held on Dante
Thomas Stearn Elliot OM who was best known as T.S Eliot born in Britain, but advanced as an essayist in America is one of the people who was really influenced by the work of Dante. He was also a poet and made a lot of references to the work of Dante. He actually described Dante works as classic and unique poet. He could only find one other person to whom he could equate to Dante – Shakespeare and commented that they ‘divide the modern world between them. There is no third’
Cecco d’ Ascoli was an Italian encyclopaedist, poet and physician. He also keenly looked into the work of Dante and had several comments to make. Cecco argued that the idea of a guide to transcendent who is young and beautiful and a historically embodied lady as portrayed in Dantes poem is basically unfit. According to Cecceco this portrayal does not simply fit into the culture. Cecceco reacts aversely to Dante,sway of classifying women as capable of taking moral instructions and intentionally redeploys the phrase made by Dante ‘sotto benda’ in to misogynist. He regards Dante as foolish naïf whose faith that women have intellect as same as looking for the Virgin Mary in the streets of Lavena.
Claudia Terry Rossignoli is an essayist who mainly gathers by prominent scholars and analyze them also analyzed Dantes work. She commented that ‘Since early texts of Dante’s Commedia started to circulate, the whole text, or parts of it were frequently accompanied by text transcription, notes and glosses. According to her there is a rich literary techniques used by Dante that still remain relevant to date