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Portrait of Dante Alighieri

Literature · Poets

Dante Alighieri

c. 1265–1321 · Italian (Florentine)

Medieval Italian poetry; dolce stil novo

Dante Alighieri was a Florentine poet and politician whose Divine Comedy, an allegorical journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, is the supreme poem of the Middle Ages. Writing in Tuscan vernacular rather than Latin, he did more than anyone to establish it as the Italian literary language, earning him the title "father of the Italian language". Exiled from Florence in 1302, he never returned and died in Ravenna.

How to spot them

  • ▸The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, in terza rima
  • ▸Guided by Virgil through Hell and Purgatory, then by Beatrice in Paradise
  • ▸Beatrice Portinari, the idealised love of La Vita Nuova
  • ▸White Guelph exiled from Florence in 1302; buried in Ravenna

Key works

Inferno (c. 1308–1314)

First part of the Comedy: a descent through the nine circles of Hell to Satan frozen in ice

Purgatorio (c. 1308–1315)

Second part: the climb up the mountain of Purgatory to the Earthly Paradise

Paradiso (c. 1316–1321)

Third part: ascent through the heavenly spheres to the vision of God

La Vita Nuova (c. 1294)

Poems linked by prose commentary on his love for Beatrice and grief at her death

De vulgari eloquentia (c. 1302–1305)

Unfinished Latin treatise defending the vernacular as a literary language

De Monarchia (c. 1312–1313)

Latin political treatise arguing for a universal emperor independent of the papacy

Convivio (The Banquet) (c. 1304–1307)

Unfinished vernacular work of philosophical commentary on his own canzoni

Key ideas

  • Contrapasso: in the Inferno, each sinner's punishment mirrors or inverts the sin
  • Terza rima (aba bcb cdc ...), the interlocking rhyme scheme he devised for the Comedy
  • Use of the vernacular for the loftiest subjects, making Tuscan the basis of literary Italian
  • Love as the force that moves the sun and the other stars, the Comedy's final line

Quick-fire facts

  • •He called the poem simply Commedia; 'Divina' was added later, appearing in the title of a 1555 Venice edition
  • •The Comedy has 100 cantos: 34 in Inferno (including an introductory canto) and 33 each in Purgatorio and Paradiso
  • •Each of the three parts ends with the word 'stelle' (stars)
  • •The gate of Hell bears the inscription usually translated 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here' (Inferno III)
  • •At the centre of Hell Satan chews the traitors Judas, Brutus and Cassius
  • •Paolo and Francesca appear in Inferno V; Count Ugolino in Inferno XXXIII
  • •St Bernard of Clairvaux replaces Beatrice as his final guide in Paradiso
  • •Italy marks Dantedì, a national Dante day, on 25 March

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources