The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy (Italian: Commedia, later
christened "Divina" by Giovanni Boccaccio), written by Dante
Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central
epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of
world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian
afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the
Western Church. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as
the Italian standard.

— Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.