The New Life

The great thirteenth-century Italian poet explores young love in this early autobiographical work blending prose and poetry.

Long before writing his epic Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri wrote of his love for Beatrice Portinari, his lifelong muse. In The New Life, Alighieri pursued his own style of love poetry, moving beyond the limitations of courtly love to focus on the divinity of love itself. This style, which he would later call Dolce Stil Novo, was developed over the course of a decade in which he wrote the sonnets, ballads, and songs that form the text of this work. The final canzone is left unfinished, abandoned after Beatrice’s untimely death.