Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri was born into the violent factional politics of medieval Florence, fell in love with a girl named Beatrice at age nine, lost her to death at twenty-four, and never recovered. When political enemies exiled him from Florence at thirty-six, condemning him to be burned alive if he returned, he wandered Italy's courts for the rest of his life, never seeing home again. In that bitter exile, he wrote the Divine Comedy, a 14,233-line poem describing a journey through the afterlife: the terraced horrors of Hell, the cleansing slopes of Purgatory, the spinning spheres of Paradise. It is perhaps the greatest single work of literature ever written. Dante populated his Hell with popes, emperors, and personal enemies; he made Virgil his guide and Beatrice his salvation. He wrote not in Latin but in Tuscan vernacular, essentially creating the Italian language.