DANTE ALIGHIERI: THE DIVINE COMEDY

Dante is primarily important because he wrote the Comedy in his dialect of Tuscany which given the popularity that his Comedy had at the time became the Italian language still spoken today.
The subject of the Comedy wasn’t his mental elaboration; it was just the collection of stories used by normal people when trying to explain what may happen to our soul after death.
This is why his Comedy has been always a “best seller”. The narration of a real man about a travel made to the outer world, or the world of the dead, in which many well known people are met, is very credible and acceptable.
Dante gave a structure to the outer world very acceptable and even intuitive to the point that it became the way the Catholic religion structured its own explanation of question of mankind.
Whoever reads it today in the second millennium reacts exactly like who read it seven hundred years ago, surprise, curiosity and fascination.
Dante explores the outer world in company of Virgilio who was who wrote the bucolic poems about country and simple living.
Together the walk through the Hell where the souls of the people who in life did the unjust and cruel will be forever, each type of what’s called sin is punished with a different penalty and in a different part of this world.
After Hell they go up to Purgatory which is where the souls can be cleaned of the sins that aren’t called mortal but venial sins so they must be purified in different ways and times.
The end of this trip is dedicated to Paradise or heaven where the souls can feel the closeness to God and enjoy absolute freedom that extends to influence earthly matters.
The large number of famous people nominated and met in person by Dante along his trip is omni comprehensive of all the people of notice for the time when it was written so not only it teaches things by examples using well known lives but it does this using a very logical way.
I believe that this is the reason why the Divine Comedy became soon a very popular book to read and study and it still is seven hundred years after having been written.