Poet, ambassador and shaper of Italian language, Dante Alighieri is celebrated for his Divine Comedy, an overview of hellish and heavenly expressions of human behaviour, in which the institutions of religion and politics are found wanting. His journey through historical vistas begins in Hell, moves through Purgatory and leads into Heaven. The poet Virgil steers him through the forest of life in which he has lost his way leads him through the vistas of Hell and Purgatory peopled allegorically through different levels of immorality, including ignorance, lust, false counselling, fraud and hypocrisy. Beatrice the innocent love of his life then takes him through paradisal spheres finally handing him to Bernard of Clairvaux and a glimpse of the Beatific Vision which combines beauty and goodness with complete understanding.
Life
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/dante-alighieri
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04628a.htm
http://www.worldofdante.org
Writings
The Divine Comedy - the Vision of Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8800/8800-h/8800-h.htm
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/inferno