Dante Alighieri
c. 1265–1321
Biography
Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher, who was born in Florence about 1265 and died in exile at Ravenna in 1321. He lived through the political quarrels of his native city and was banished from it, so the rest of his life was spent away from Florence.
His Divine Comedy describes a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, guided first by the Latin poet Virgil and then by Beatrice. It is widely regarded as one of the central poems of the Middle Ages and as the greatest work of Italian literature.
Dante wrote in the Tuscan speech of Florence rather than in Latin, the usual language of learned writing, and his use of the vernacular helped shape the standard Italian used today. He also influenced English poets such as Chaucer, Milton and Tennyson, and he is credited with first using the three-line terza rima, the verse form of the Comedy.
The site holds The Divine Comedy in the English version of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the nineteenth-century American poet, which puts the poem into English verse for readers who do not have Italian.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
The Divine Comedy (Longfellow’s translation)
by Dante Alighieri (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Dante, lost in a dark wood in midlife, is led by Virgil down through the circles of Hell and up the mountain of Purgatory, and then by Beatrice through the spheres of Paradise to the vision of God. Longfellow's unrhymed translation, in 100 cantos, keeps close to the Italian line…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.