Book Description

Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (1265-1321), was an Italian poet from Florence. His central work, the Divina Commedia (c1320) (originally called "Commedia" and later called "Divina" by Boccaccio hence "Divina Commedia" or the Divine Comedy), is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature. Dante wrote the Divine Comedy in a new language he called "Italian," based on the regional dialect of Tuscany, with some elements of Latin and of the other regional dialects. It describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and of another of his works, La Vita Nuova (The New Life) (1295). In Italian Dante is known as "the Supreme Poet" (il Sommo Poeta). Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains" or "the three crowns." Dante is also called the "Father of the Italian language." The first biography written on him was by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), who wrote the Trattatello in Laude di Dante (1357).