The Pillars: Jerusalem, Athens, and the Western Mind Medieval Literature VIII: Dante and Boccaccio
Jul 9, 2025
Anthony Nussmeier, Chair of Modern Languages and Italian scholar of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, dives into Dante’s innovations in the Commedia and why it still resonates. He traces Dante’s sources, political tensions, and his shaping of the Italian vernacular. Then he explores Boccaccio’s Decameron, its everyday realism after the Black Death, and his turn to classical humanism.
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Commedia Born From Dante's Exile
- Dante wrote the Commedia as a work of exile that responds directly to his political banishment from Florence.
- His six-month political service, factional involvement with the white Guelphs, and lifelong exile provided the emotional and historical stimulus for the epic.
Dante as Master Synthesizer
- Dante synthesized classical epic (Aeneid), Scripture, vernacular poetry, and mystical sources to create something new rather than inventing ex nihilo.
- He deliberately evokes Aeneas and Paul and uses predecessors like Guido Cavalcanti and Brunetto Latini as building blocks for the Commedia.
Inferno Reshaped Western Imagination
- Dante's depiction of hell (contrapasso) reshaped Western imagination and influenced literature, theology, and politics for centuries.
- His innovations affected figures from Milton to Joyce and even 19th-century political rhetoric such as anti-slavery appeals by Charles Sumner.
