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...

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…