About Dante Alighieri
ABOUT DANTE ALIGHIERI
Italy’s most revered writer, Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence. Much of what is known about his life can be found in his own writing. Although its fortunes had declined by the time of Dante’s birth, his family had a noble lineage. Dante took an interest in poetry at an early age, using contemporary Italian masters as his models. He met Bice Portinari, whom he called Beatrice (”the bringer of blessings”), when both were nine years old. Though he only loved her from afar and she died in 1290, she inspired his work for the rest of his life. The stylistically innovative La vita nuova, written between 1283 and 1291 and comprised of thirty-one lyric poems and a prose commentary, sanctifies Dante’s love for Beatrice. After completing La vita nuova, Dante immersed himself in the study of classical and medieval authors, including Virgil, whose Aeneid would have a profound influence on the Divine Comedy.
Throughout the thirteenth century, Florence was embroiled in fighting between two political factions—the Guelfs, who favored papal authority, and the Ghibellines, who favored imperial authority. The Guelfs, with whom Dante’s family was allied, gained control of Florence in 1300. The party then split into the Blacks, supported by Pope Boniface VIII because they encouraged his plan to bring Florence and Tuscany under papal control, and the Whites, who opposed this plan. Dante sided with the Whites. While he was on an ambassadorial trip to Rome trying to resolve the conflict, the Blacks consolidated their power. Dante was ordered to pay a fine after being convicted on specious charges of corruption. Because he was not present to pay it, he was condemned to death should he ever return to Florence.
Dante married Gemma Donati around 1285, but, once exiled, he wandered Italy alone and impoverished. All of his subsequent writing, especially the Comedy, reveals his longing for his native city, which he never saw again. Between 1304 and 1306, Dante began two works concerned with the formal qualities of poetry, De vulgari eloquentia and Il convivio, neither of which he completed. He began writing the Comedy around the same time. A religious allegory conceived on a grand scale, the Comedy was revolutionary in its execution. With its now iconic imagery and language that achieves startling combinations of literal and figurative expressiveness, the Comedy possesses a rare power. As soon as it was circulated, it was recognized as a masterpiece. Dante’s last home was Ravenna, where he died in 1321.