Music as Mirror: Dante's Treatment of Music in the Divine Comedy
<span style="font-family: mceinline;">A <span style="font-family: mceinline;">time o<span style="font-family: mceinline;">f <span style="font-family: mceinline;">great musical development, the fourteenth century is the per<span style="font-family: mceinline;">fect back<span style="font-family: mceinline;">drop for the auditory all<span style="font-family: mceinline;">usions of <span style="font-family: mceinline;">Dante Alighieri's <em>Divi</em><span style="font-family: mceinline;"><em>ne Comedy</em>. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>This article argues that Dante utilizes musical imagery as an essential component of his allegory. Influenced by both Christian thinkers and philosophers, Dante likely viewed scholastic music as an adjunct of religion. In the Divine Comedy, therefore, Dante presents auditory allusions as an inextricable factor of the protagonist's epic pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Through a progression of anti-music in Inferno to human context in Purgatory to the music of the spheres in Paradise, this essay explores how the musical langauge of Dante's <em>Divine Comedy</em> conveys humanity's innate connection with God.