Dante Alighieri: Dante Alighieri, the greatest of the Italian poets, was a major figure in the Renaissance's revolution of arts and letters. His epic masterpiece," The Divine Comedy", ranks as one of the truly great literary works in history. "The Divine Comedy" presents a panoramic view of man and his place in the cosmos, describing a mans journey through the divine realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The traveler is helped first by Virgil, then by the woman Beatrice, who was based on Beatrice Portinari, a figure Dante idealized as a figure of Divine love. Combining deeply religious themes with sharp commentaries on social and political institutions, "The Divine Comedy" used Tuscan dialect.
