Renaissance Dante Cervantes and Boccacio

The literature of the Renaissance illustrates the primary principles undergirding this momentous social, political, cultural, and ideological movement. As the heart of the Renaissance, Italy offered the world a flowering of both visual and literary arts, often woven together to impart a new sense of what it meant to be human. Building upon Greco-Roman literary and artistic traditions did not mean that the Renaissance was doomed to focus on an idealized past. Quite the contrary, Renaissance artists and writers fused a forward-thinking vision with the wisdom and merits of past literary and artistic giants. For example, Dante’s guide in the Inferno is Virgil, the Roman poet. Invoking Virgil as the guide through the levels of hell shows that Renaissance writers looked to the past for guidance through potentially tumultuous times. After all, the Renaissance was the first time that the authority of the Roman Catholic Church would be called into question on a widespread and meaningful level. The Renaissance was a humanistic movement, which threatened to undermine the theistic orientation of church doctrine. Italian Renaissance writers like Dante, Boccacio, and Cervantes grappled with how to reconcile their affection for and continued identification with Christianity while simultaneously embracing classicism and humanism.
The motif of hell is particularly persistent in Renaissance literature and art. Renaissance literature shows how the concept of Hell changes dramatically from the pre-Christian era to 14th century Europe. Hell becomes less frightening than the Medieval Christians would have had it; the imagery of fire and brimstone are certainly apparent in vivid language in both Dante’s Inferno and in Boccacio’s The Decameron. Yet the protagonists of their stories do not cower in fear of hell. In fact, they conquer hell like classical heroes might. With Virgil as his guide, Dante moves through the circles of Hell towards God, showing how the author reconciles his budding interest in humanism and classicism with church doctrine. In the tenth tale on the third day in The Decameron, a girl is actually responsible for locking the devil in hell. She does so in the service of God. Just like Dante, Boccacio unifies the new Renaissance vision for humanity with Church authority. Yet both of these works have the potential to be subversive. Boccacio makes ample allusions to sexuality, as does Dante, albeit under the pretense of revealing the nature of sin. Likewise, Cervantes’s story Don Quixote is filled with lusty passages that unabashedly speak of human desire and intimacy. The return to sexuality and intimacy evokes pre-Christian attitudes and behaviors, and framing their stories within the contemporary Christian worldview was politically sensible.
These three classic Renaissance texts, Dante’s Inferno, Boccacio’s The Decameron and Cervantes’s Don Quixote, also reveal the Renaissance as a reaction towards the medieval mentality. Returning to Greco-Roman themes and motifs did not mean that Renaissance writers totally did away with the type of storytelling devices used in medieval Europe. On the contrary, Cervantes and Boccacio especially draw from the tropes used in the collections of bawdy tales that characterized some medieval literature. The difference was the Cervantes and Boccacio were effectively satirizing the Middle Ages through their work. Don Quixote’s longing for the past is ironic in that what he really seeks is a new social order, evidence in his chivalric behavior towards the prisoners in Chapter 22. The hero is left “fuming to find himself so served by the very persons for whom he had done so much,” (Cervantes, Chapter 22). The fact that the freed prisoners then direct their rage at the man who liberated them is Cervantes’s way of showing how Europeans resisted the social and political changes wrought by the Renaissance.
Although Europe was far from being ready for democratic reforms, the return to the bastions of republicanism and democratic values inherent in ancient Greece and Rome did show that Cervantes, Boccacio, and Dante were harbingers of political changes to come. In Chapter 22 of Don Quixote, as elsewhere in the text, the hero recognizes the oppressiveness of the monarchy and the Catholic Church. While Dante’s and Boccacio’s approach is much subtler, they too reveal discontent with state authority, meted out through the Church as a vehicle for social control. The fact that Dante finds himself led through hell by Virgil in the first three chapters of the Inferno shows that it is not the Church that can help individual people overcome sin and suffering but intellectualism, reason, and creative expression: all of which Virgil symbolizes. Otherwise, Dante would have drawn a priest as the person who leads him through the circles of hell. In the story of locking up the devil, it is not a priest or any clergyman who subdues Satan, but a young girl—the antithesis of a priest. Boccacio cleverly undermines gender norms and roles through his telling of this tale. In fact, Boccacio undermines church authority outright in his depiction of premarital sex. After the girl proves her prowess at subduing the devil, she and the man strip naked. Given the Church’s attitudes towards female sexuality, Boccacio completely subverts its cosmic order by empowering the woman both theologically and sexually. The first three cantos of Dante’s Inferno are less overt in their suggestions of social upheaval, but they do utilize some tropes readers would be well familiar with, such as being led into the dark woods. Also feminist in its approach, Dante invokes the female power of the Muses in Canto II. His invocation of what are essentially pagan gods would easily have been construed as subverting church authority. Knowing this, Dante cleverly refers to God’s grace within the same passage.
Perspective and worldview changed considerably since the times of the ancient Greeks, through the Roman era, and up to centuries medieval European “dark ages.” The Greeks celebrated critical inquiry, philosophy, and reason, elevating all humanities including physical fitness to a level of art. Although the contributions of the Romans were no less magnificent, Roman imperialism was an emblem of state decadence, laying the foundation for the equally as hegemonic Roman Catholic Church. Driving down the spirit of creative enterprise through systematic social control, limitations on literacy, and a feudal system of government, the Church and its vassal kings and regional legions stifled artistic expression. Virgil literally ilves in hell, the reader learns in Canto II, a symbol of Church repression of European cultural heritage. Maverick artists and writers like Dante had to symbolically enter the gates of hell, moving through the dark woods symbolizing the fear of the unknown. Hell becomes almost a character in stories like the Inferno and in the tenth story of Boccacio’s The Decameron. Dante enters Hell, but has with him his trusty guide Virgil who represents all that the church had struggled so hard to repress: individualism in artistic pursuits. Boccacio’s female heroine also faces hell with aplomb. Don Quixote is also a politically subversive character, one who symbolically challenges both church and monarchic authority. Don Quixote risks his life as a lone warrior in search of a new way of being.
he church had claimed to hold power over human consciousness itself, but Renaissance writers knew better. Digging deep into European cultural history, these authors discovered a treasure trove of art and literature. Greco-Roman cultures were symbols of divine wisdom and inspiration. Dante situates Virgil in hell specifically to show how for centuries the Church had willfully repressed the wisdom of the Greek and Roman civilizations. The Renaissance perspective was even more optimistic and forward thinking than their predecessors in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. It could be possible to use the arts to criticize hegemonic power without being burned at the stake.








Works Cited

Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Digital copy: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/inferno-canto-i
Boccacio. The Decameron. Digital copy: https://archive.org/stream/storiesboccacci00boccgoog/storiesboccacci00boccgoog_djvu.txt
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Full text: http://www.spanisharts.com/books/quijote/chapter22.htm