“ woke her then and trembling and obedient In the very first poem, Dante captures the intensity of his love, giving us an image of Beatrice eating his flaming heart:
These are not just random poems about a loved one, but different events involving his meetings with Beatrice throughout the city give rise to particular poems. By placing the poetry in between a prose narrative, he structures the work and gives a context to the poetry.
The prose narrative covers from the time he first sees Beatrice from afar to her death. In her physical beauty and virtuous qualities, he finds access to the divine realm of heaven, transforming the courtly love poetry into an almost religious experience. He admires Beatrice, her beauty, but it never leads him to try to consummate his love. From a modern perspective, Dante’s love seems odd. Beatrice is not merely the beloved woman, but he raises her to a divine figure, foreshadowing her place as Dante’s guide in heaven in his masterpiece the Divine Comedy.
One big innovation is that he wrote the work in the Italian vernacular rather than in Latin. Dante is writing in the tradition of courtly love, but develops the genre further. The work combines prose with poetry (sonnets, canzones, and ballads). That even though at first I felt him harsh,īefore The Divine Comedy, Dante wrote La Vita Nuova (the New Life).
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