Florence
Italian poet and philosopher, author of the Divine Comedy.
Dante Alighieri was a Florentine of minor nobility who fought at Campaldino, held his city's highest office, and was condemned to be burned alive when the political wheel turned in 1302. He never saw Florence again. Out of twenty years of exile — "how salt the bread of others tastes," he wrote — came the Divine Comedy, the poem that built the medieval Christian cosmos in words and then outlived it.
The Commedia is one hundred cantos in terza rima, an architecture as deliberate as a cathedral: Inferno's nine descending circles, where the punishment is the sin made visible — the lustful blown forever on the winds they rode in life; Purgatorio's seven terraces of hope and discipline, the most humane of the three realms; Paradiso's spheres of light, ending in the vision of the Trinity where "my desire and my will were turned... by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars."
He is in this library because the poem is philosophy as much as poetry. Its theology is largely Aquinas set to music; its ethics Aristotle's, graded into a moral geography; and its boldness startling — popes stuffed head-down in Hell's rock, his guide a pagan (Virgil, reason personified), and the Muslim philosophers Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd honored in Limbo beside the sages of Greece, with Saladin nearby. Beatrice — the Florentine girl he loved from afar and lost — is transfigured into revelation itself, the claim that a particular human love can be a ladder to God.
His treatises matter too: De Monarchia argued empire and papacy rule by separate divine mandates (the Church burned it); De Vulgari Eloquentia defended writing in the vernacular, which the Comedy proved. He died in Ravenna in 1321. Florence still asks for the bones; Ravenna keeps them.
en
Christian literature, Irish -- History and criticism; Christian saints -- Ireland; Civilization, Celtic, in literature; Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321 -- Criticism and interpretation; Fís Adamnáin; Heaven -- Christianity -- History of doctrines -- Middle Ages, 600-1500; Heaven in literature; Hell -- Chr
en
Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
en
Astronomy, Ancient; Astronomy, Medieval; Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321 -- Knowledge -- Astronomy; Early maps
en
Pre-Raphaelitism -- Great Britain; Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882
en
Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321; Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Divina commedia
en
Church and state -- Early works to 1800; Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321; Italy -- Politics and government -- 476-1268
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Illustrated books -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century -- Bibliography; Illustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century; Illustration of books, Victorian -- Great Britain
en
Brown, Ford Madox, 1821-1893; Pre-Raphaelites -- Great Britain -- Correspondence; Pre-Raphaelites -- Great Britain -- Diaries; Pre-Raphaelitism -- Great Britain; Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Florence (Italy) -- History -- To 1421
en
Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321 -- Adaptations
en
Epic poetry, Italian -- Translations into English; Hell -- Poetry; Italian poetry -- To 1400 -- Translations into English
en
Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321; Didactic poetry -- History and criticism; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832; Lucretius Carus, Titus; Philosophy in literature
en
American wit and humor; Hell -- Humor
Quote Attribution
Identify the philosopher behind a quote using AI.
Works by and about Dante Alighieri — readable in full, right here in the Library.
