The Passing of Dante
On this day in 1321, in the city of Ravenna, his home after being exiled from Florence, died Dante Alighieri, author of numerous works but especially the epic Comedy. Today better known as the “Divine” Comedy after Boccaccio a generation later informally amended its title, Dante wrote his greatest work in his native Tuscan dialect of Italian, abandoning the more typical approach of writing in Latin (and thereby earning the enmity of Petrarch), and in so doing fixing that dialect as “proper Italian.”
Dante’s remains remain in Ravenna; his “tomb” in Florence is a cenotaph, and numerous request to return his remains to the Florence have been rejected.
The post-death story of Dante’s influence is recounted in Dante’s Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy by Guy P. Rafa, while his best biography is Dante: The Story of His Life by Marco Santagata. If you are looking for some help in reading the Comedy, Joseph Gallagher’s A Modern Reader's Guide to Dante's The Divine Comedy may be for you. Another good resource is The Cambridge Companion to Dante by Rachel Jacoff.
