Dante

Dante By: John Kame Dante Alighieri was the first and best Italian poet and wrote mainly on love and religion. His Divine Comedy is considered the greatest book of the last millennium. George Steiner said, "Dante’s totality of poet form and philosophic thought, of local universality and language, remains unrivaled. At a time where the notion of culture and of European culture in particular, is somewhat in doubt, Dante is the sovereign underwriter. His are the solutions beyond logic” (Twito 5). On June 5, 1265 Dante was born Durante Alighieri, Dante was a nickname, in Florence, Italy. His family was of decayed nobility with some pretensions to power (Giles 1). He was taught the classics and scholastic Christian literature, and wrote much poetry when he was young, consisting mainly of love lyrics in the style of Guido Guinizelli and Guido Cavalcanti. This style that used poetical art not only to speak about love, but to celebrate it, he called Stilnovo which means “new style” (Giles 2). He fell in love with a woman named Beatrice, who was also called Bice di Folco Portinarti by some, whom he met only twice in 1274 and 1283 at the age of nine and eighteen dante, love, beatrice, work, movement, la, giles, alighieri, world, through, divine, called, soul, poet, literature, florence, first, dante’s, commedia, benfell, wrote, vita, twito, thought, style, spirit, sense, power, poetry, online, oct, nuova, nine, much, life, italy