From Florence to Paradise

Dante’s first work, the Vita Nuova , relocates, as it were, his infatuation with Beatrice from Florence to heaven, reflecting a turning point in his early writing, eschewing erotic desire, however gentle, in favour of a more intellectual and spiritual appreciation of his lady. This shift, influenced by Italian predecessors such as Guido Guinizelli, foreshadows his later magnum opus, The Comedy . Nonetheless, Dante grappled with the tension between sensual appetite (cf. cupiditas ) and spiritual affection (cf. caritas ) throughout his life. Various pieces written during his early years of exile express an Ovidian and sometimes naturalistic view of love, while The Comedy recycled the twelfth-century topos of fin’amor , embodied in the figure of Francesca, punished in Hell, in stark contrast with Beatrice, resident in the celestial Rose.