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===Simile===
===Simile===
The Divine Comedy is notable for its use of [[simile]]. Throughout the work, Dante casts his net wide to find comparisons for the unearthly sights he describes, drawing from history, nature, meteorology, biology and physics, amongst many sources. In the most typical examples, the simile is introduced first, and then the sight which is compared to it is described; common forms are "''Quale ... tale ...''" and "''Come ... cosí ...''". In many cases, similes are long and elaborate; for example, near the start of Inferno XXI, nine lines are devoted to describing the boiling pitch used by [[Venice|Venetian]] shipbuilders, which is then used as a simile for the tar in which the souls of [[barratry|barraters]] meet their fate.
The Divine Comedy is notable for its use of [[simile]]. Throughout the work, Dante casts his net wide to find comparisons for the unearthly sights he describes, drawing from history, nature, meteorology, biology and physics, amongst many sources. In the most typical examples, the simile is introduced first, and then the sight which is compared to it is described; common forms are "''Quale ... tale ...''" and "''Come ... cosí ...''". In many cases, similes are long and elaborate; for example, near the start of Inferno XXI, nine lines are devoted to describing the boiling pitch used by [[Venice|Venetian]] shipbuilders, which is then used as a simile for the tar in which the souls of [[barratry|barraters]] meet their fate.
==Influence==
Seven hundred years after it was written, the Divine Comedy remains the best-known work in the [[Italian]] language. Moreover, it was very influential in the development of that language: at the time it was written, it was far more common to write in [[Latin]] than the vernacular, a situation which was changed by the Comedy's success. As a result, Dante's [[Tuscany|Tuscan]] dialect eventually became established as the standard form of Italian, forming the basis of the language as it is spoken today.
Outside Italy, the Divine Comedy has been almost as influential. In particular, popular conceptions of Hell are often shaped by the Inferno (for example, with gruesome punishments designed to fit each type of sin), and the word 'Dantesque' has come to describe grotesquely violent situations. Many writers have been directly influenced by the work, and the Inferno in particular; one example is [[T.S. Eliot]], whose poem ''The Wasteland'' takes the Inferno as its main inspiration.
In a more general sense, Dante's daring originality has been a great influence on all forms of writing, in ways that are not always noticeable to the modern reader because they are now so commonplace. When the Divine Comedy was written, it was unthinkable to combine highbrow and lowbrow writing in the same work; to use the vernacular for such a grand task; and to put the author himself in such a prominent role in an imaginative work. All of these are now common in literature, showing the debt that successive generations of writers owe to Dante, and to the Divine Comedy in particular.
==References==
==References==