The young Dante Alighieri was a self-absorbed poet who composed rarefied verse about the nature of love. While medieval Florence descended into violent turmoil, he seemed entirely uninterested by anything other than Beatrice, the girl he had loved since they were both children. Fate had to work very hard to make him write his great work, ''The Divine Comedy''. This is the story of how it did so. Dante became caught up in a world of feuds, corruption and betrayal. Eventually, he was exiled from Florence and forbidden to return on pain of death. It was then that he turned his attention to the world around him and began an intensive course of self-education. He abandoned attempts to change mankind through philosophy in favour of an impassioned plea, made through a new kind of fiction. The result was ''The Comedy'', a work of fantasy fiction about a journey from Hell to Heaven, which is at the same time a poem about Beatrice and Dante's own statement about the nature of the universe. ''The Comedy'' speaks from the strange and distant world of the medieval mind, but it has resonances for anyone today who is concerned about how things are and how they ought to be.Interweaving Dante's imaginary journey through the cosmos with the real story of his life, James Burge reveals how a love-struck Florentine teenager evolved into il Sommo Poeta (the Supreme Poet).