Dante Alighieri, popularly known as Dante, was a chief Italian poet during the middle ages. Born in Florence, he spent a large portion of his life in exile. Although more famous for his long poem, ‘Divine Comedy’, he was also a distinguished prose writer, literally theorist, philosopher and political thinker. At a time, when majority of poets and writers wrote in Latin, Dante used Tuscan dialect, thus not only enabling the common man to enjoy his work, but also set a precedence, which would later be followed by writers like Petrarch and Boccaccio. Thus he influenced the course of the development of Italian literature and for this he is often referred as the ‘Father of Italian Language’. Moreover, his works, especially his ‘Divine Comedy’ provided inspiration for many Western artists and influenced many great poets like John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alfred Tennyson. However, he was also an able statesman and on the conspiracy of his political opponents, he had to spend the last part of his life in exile, pining fruitlessly to return home; but died in Ravenna at the age of 56.