Well the Divina Comedia appears like a "hitch-hikers guide to heaven and hell", and it was written in the 14th century. Judging by today's standards, it would be a rather cruel self-insert fanfiction, in which the author puts his political opponents through eternal torture. And he gets to meet his favorite author Virgil who likes him a lot, and they walk through hell together and then he gets to see heaven and it's all really cool, and the girl he fancies is there and also Bernard de Clairvaux!
But you probably feel that calling the Divine Comedy a work of fiction is awkward. Not necessarily wrong (it contains fictional elements), but the term is just not suitable. The literary scene and indeed society as a whole were different in medieval Italy. For starters, Heaven and Hell were real places and the bible was literally true. Dante's poem is a long allegory of the Christian soul struggling with sin and salvation. Comparing it to modern genres is hopelessly anachronistic, as I showed above.
So it could very well be something we'd interpret as a fictional journey through heaven and hell. But it would not have been fictional in the same sense to the medieval makers.
But you probably feel that calling the Divine Comedy a work of fiction is awkward. Not necessarily wrong (it contains fictional elements), but the term is just not suitable. The literary scene and indeed society as a whole were different in medieval Italy. For starters, Heaven and Hell were real places and the bible was literally true. Dante's poem is a long allegory of the Christian soul struggling with sin and salvation. Comparing it to modern genres is hopelessly anachronistic, as I showed above.
So it could very well be something we'd interpret as a fictional journey through heaven and hell. But it would not have been fictional in the same sense to the medieval makers.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)