In Dante’s imagined journey through Hell and Purgatory to Heaven, he meets a great many characters. In fact, almost 900 – most of them in hell.
Dante Alighieri, often referred to simply as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His La Commedia (known in English as The Divine Comedy) is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
Born in Florence, Italy, where he lived most of his life and became a respected poet, Dante’s life was shaped by conflict. He learned from his time’s most remarkable poetic minds, crediting much of his success to his mentor, Guido Cavalcanti. Taking an active interest in the skirmishes in Florence’s politics Dante aligned himself with a rival faction to the Papacy. His party was defeated in a coup in 1301, and Dante was banished from Florence. He lived in exile until his death twenty years later and completed several of his works during this time.
Dante is known for introducing informal language in literature at a time when most poetry was written in Latin, making it accessible only to the most educated readers. His use of the Florentine dialect helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language and set a precedent that important Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would later follow.
Probably begun around 1307 and completed shortly before his death, Dante’s most famous work, The Divine Comedy, is rich in science, astronomy, and philosophy, and rooted in 14th-century Catholicism and Italian politics. It describes Dante’s imagined journey through Hell and Purgatory to Heaven.
Dante’s final days were spent in Ravenna, where he had been invited to stay in the city in 1318 by its prince, Guido II da Polenta. Dante died in Ravenna on 14 September 1321, aged about 56, of quartan malaria contracted while returning from a diplomatic mission to the Republic of Venice.
Dante was instrumental in establishing the literature of Italy and is cited as an influence on such English writers as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton and Alfred Tennyson, among many others.