Birthdate: 1265
Nationality: Italy
Bio:
Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence, Italy to a notable family of modest means. Though born into the middle class, he would go on to associate with major poets and writers of his time. Dante was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for The Divine Comedy, considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language.
Dante had a significant impact on the course of European history and culture. His early life was spent among other poets in the literary scene of late-medieval Florence. There he befriended Guido Cavalcanti and joined a circle of intellectuals and political activists involved in the internal feuding that split medieval Italy between the Guelph and Ghibelline factions. After being sent into exile from Florence in 1302, a punishment for corruption and political intrigues, Dante wandered Italy looking for safety and eventually ended up in Ravenna, where he had taken refuge under the protection of Guido da Polenta. It was during this time of exile that he wrote The Divine Comedy.
The Divine Comedy established Dante as one of the greatest poets of the Middle Ages. Through the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, he created what is perhaps the most magnificent vision of the afterlife in Western literature. Though he wrote in the vernacular Italian rather than Latin, his work has had immense influence on world literature. Dante died in 1321, while working on his ambitious intellectual and artistic vision embodied in The Divine Comedy. He would forever be acknowledged as the father of the Italian language and one of history’s supreme poets.