DAY 1

• 13-14th century Northern Italy
• "Italy" didn't exist, more like a unified idea of it did
• Dante is a Florantine
• in dante's day, they wrote in Latin
• To succeed you needed to know latin and everyone was catholic
• nobody spoke in the written latin, they spoke a "vulgar" form of latin
• they wrote in Roman Latin
• Dante was good at Latin which is why what he did was more popular. He was not the first to do what he did
• A lot of guys wrote courtley love poetry.
  • About unrequited love
  • usually involves a knight. social rankings: knight > the professions > peasants
  • Nobility class is called "Gentilo"
  • "Madonna–whore complex" -Dennis
  • Love is a philosophical idea in these texts
  • Boethius was executed by Theodoric the Great.
  • The "brotherhood of love" would fixate on women who had husbands to be their muse. Dante fixated on a woman named Beatrice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelphs_and_Ghibellines

(copy from notebook later)