Dante Alighieri
Poet
An exiled and wandering figure during his writing lifetime, Dante is now considered Italy's greatest poet -- so much a literary giant that he is generally known by his first name alone. The Divine Comedy, by far his most famous work, is the story of a journey through Hell, Purgatory and finally Paradise. (The journey through Hell is often referred to independently as "Dante's Inferno.") In the poem the first two stages are guided by the Roman poet Virgil, and the final visit to Paradise is led by a woman named Beatrice -- a girl Dante met briefly when he was nine and whom he idolized the rest of his life. The Divine Comedy is the source of many famous classical images, inspiring works by William Blake and others, and is famous for its inscription on the gates of Hell: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here."Extra credit: Dante named his work La commedia, or The Comedy. After his death others added "Divine" to make it La divina commedia.
See Dante, O. Henry and Benedict Arnold in our loop Famous Pharmacists.
Blog posts mentioning Dante Alighieri:
Four Good Links
Dante Gabriel Alighieri
A fan provides background and samples
The Princeton Dante Project
Ambitious Web project of annotated electronic texts for scholars
The World of Dante
"Hypermedia environment" for studying Dante, including text of Inferno
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
His profile from Neurotic Poets
Vital Stats
Birth
Birthplace
Death
Best Known As
The author of The Divine Comedy
