Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

DANTE ALIGHIERI Dante Alighieri (actually Durante, Dante was a nickname) was an “Italian poet, [he] was born in Florence in May, 1265. Little is known of his youth except what is told in his work in verse and prose entitled La Vita Nuova (The New Life). This is the story of his love for Beatrice from the first moment of his enamorement, when he was but nine years old and she eight, to her death in June, 1290” (Singleton). In Italy, there was no political union, but the country was divided into many different town councils. The political parties were two: the Guelfi and the Ghibellini. The former ones were in favor of the Pope and the latter ones were in favor oof the emperor. At the beginning of the XIV century, the Guelfi led most of the councils in Italy. In Florence, the Guelfo party split into two parts: the whites (bianchi, in favor of the Emperor) and the blacks (neri, in favor of the Pope). Dante was a white guelfo. The years around 1300 were the ones in which political fights between whites and blacks became stronger and more dramatic In this period (especially between 1280 and 1310) a new poetical movement was born: the Stilnovo (the n