Ferrante, J M. The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy. Princeton Legacy Library. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

From the publisher:

Joan Ferrante analyzes the Divine Comedy in terms of public issues, which continued foremost in Dante’s thinking after his exile from Florence. Professor Ferrante examines the political concepts of the poem in historical context and in light of the political theory and controversies of the period. Excerpt: The Divine Comedy purports to be a description of the state of souls after death. So Dante describes it in his dedicatory letter to Can Grande. But this refers only to its literal sense; allegorically, the subject is man as he, by the exercise of his free will, merits reward or punishment. Dante’s focus is on men’s actions and their responsibility for them. Thus, though the setting of the poem is the three realms of the other-world, and though almost all the characters are dead, there is a persistent concern throughout the work with what is going on on earth, not because of the punishments that might result in the next life, but because of the disruption being caused in this one. The most violent attacks are directed against corruption in the church and the secular state, and they are voiced through the highest regions of heaven. Far more attention is given to public issues and their effects on society than to personal moral questions, the assumption being that personal morality is virtually impossible within a corrupt society. It is obvious from the poem that Dante, whose political career was cut off by false accusations and condemnation to death, who was forced into exile from his own city but not from the political situation which had troubled it, continues to be concerned with political issues throughout his life and throughout his works. The political issues of primary concern to Dante fall into three large categories: the individual and society, city and empire, the church and the secular state. These were major topics for philosophical discussion and political controversy in his time, and they occupied him in one form or another in the Convivio, the Monarchy, the letters, and the Comedy. Like the Monarchy, the Comedy is a political tract, although it is also much more, and both occupy, or should, a position in the church-state polemic of the early fourteenth century. The pur¬ pose of this study is to analyze the political concepts expressed in the Comedy in relation to contemporary history and theory, and to define the political message(s) of the poem. This is offered as one perspective on an unusually complex and multifaceted work. It is not meant to deny the importance of other aspects— religious, aesthetic, philosophical, cultural, allegori¬ cal— but rather to emphasize one that was far more important to Dante than it has been to many modern critics.

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