Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La Divina Commedia.
The Divina Commedia is an allegory of human life, in the form of a vision of the world beyond the grave, written avowedly with the object of converting a corrupt society to righteousness: "to remove those living in this life from the state of misery, and lead them to the state of felicity".
It is composed of a hundred cantos, written in the measure known as terza rima, with its normally hendecasyllabic lines and closely linked rhymes, which Dante so modified from the popular poetry of his day that it may be regarded as his own invention.