When we speak about commonly accepted philosophical ideas, I'm sure we can include the fact that everything has its counterpart: Actions have repercussions, courage repels fear, and love contrasts hatred, among others. In the beginning of Dante's Inferno, Dante the writer confesses that "... to retell the good discovered there, I'll also tell the other things I saw" in an effort to make his recount seem more plausible by including all the gory details. Of such events, included, is that of Dante's moment of angst, when his monologue reveals that, "Then I was more afraid of death than ever; that fear would have been quite enough to kill me, had I not seen how he was held by chains." (Inferno. Canto 31. 109-111) Not only can we see here that Dante explains how a life lived with brave is a full life, and how, the absence of courage brings takes brings with it the absence of life. Fear is death. Fear bonds the links to the chain of desperation and insanity. Here, Dante the writer realizes that this was the point where he began to lose his freedom to fear.
I believe that in the future of the Divine Comedy, Dante's narrator will change, as well as the lessons he learns and the type of people he meets. Dante has very high expectations for the things his readers think of his work, which is why he addresses us prior to the scene of the man-serpent transformation in Canto 25. "If, reader, you are slow now to believe what I shall tell, that is no cause for wonder, for I who saw it can hardly accept it." (Inferno. Canto 25. 46-48) Here, he befriends the reader, by gaining his confidence in telling him to worry not. He lets us know that he expects us to believe him, but if we don't, that it's not too bad. Here he employs one of the rhetoric techniques called sympathy. He says that its all right to not be up to speed, that he himself wouldn't be up to speed either if he were in our place. It makes us feel assured and confident in the subconscious level.
I believe that in the future of the Divine Comedy, Dante will become less egotistic than he was in Inferno, as we can see when he boasts about his description of the snake-human transformation, one he claims incomparably magnificent. He diminishes other poets' work and glorifies his own by claiming that "if his verse has made of one a serpent, one a fountain,
I do not envy him; he never did transmute two natures, face to face, so that both forms were ready to exchange their matter." (Inferno. Canto 25. 98-102). He alleges his superior writing skills above those of other poets of the like including Lucan and Ovid. In this quotation, Dante the writes attempts to manipulate the reader into thinking that his writing skills are the best, not something uncommon another work I have studied: Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes, written in the early 17th century.
I believe that since the trip made by Dante is a journey of knowledge and change, that he will become less egotistic in the following chapters of his voyage of the waters of Paradiso and Purgatorio. Furthermore, I believe he will also learn to completely overcome his fears and live a full life. This means that the path of enlightenment that the rest of humanity must take is a way to learning to cope with oneself, and be at peace with God and all others.
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