Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri was born into a minor noble family in Florence and became entangled in the vicious factional politics (Guelph vs. Ghibelline, then Black Guelph vs. White Guelph) that defined the city. In 1302, while serving as a city prior, he was exiled by the Black Guelphs. He never returned. The rest of his life was spent wandering between Italian courts and cities, and it was in exile that he wrote The Divine Comedy.

The Comedy is the single most ambitious literary work of the Middle Ages — a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise that synthesizes classical philosophy, Christian theology, Florentine politics, and personal score-settling into a unified poetic vision. He wrote it in Italian (the Tuscan vernacular) rather than Latin, a radical choice that essentially created the Italian literary language.

His other works include La Vita Nuova (a mix of poetry and prose about his love for Beatrice), De Vulgari Eloquentia (a defense of writing in the vernacular), and Convivio (an unfinished philosophical work). But everything else is a footnote to the Comedy.