Dante

**An authoritative and comprehensive intellectual biography of the author of the __Divine Comedy__** For all that has been written about the author of the __Divine Comedy__, Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) remains the best guide to his own life and work. Dante's writings are therefore never far away in this authoritative and comprehensive intellectual biography, which offers a fresh account of the medieval Florentine poet's life and thought before and after his exile in 1302. Beginning with the often violent circumstances of Dante's life, the book examines his successive works as testimony to the course of his passionate humanity: his lyric poetry through to the __Vita nova__ as the great work of his first period; the __Convivio__, __De vulgari eloquentia__ and the poems of his early years in exile; and the __Monarchia__ and the __Commedia__ as the product of his maturity. Describing as it does a journey of the mind, the book confirms the nature of Dante's undertaking as an exploration of what he himself speaks of as "maturity in the flame of love." The result is an original synthesis of Dante's life and work.