The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. -DANTE ALIGHIERI

Italian poet, literary theorist, prose writer, philosopher, and political thinker Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy. Best known for his poem la Commedia.

La Commedia (the divine comedy) is considered as one of the world literature’s greatest poems. The divine comedy is about the journey through the afterlife, it’s a very long poem of about 14,233 lines.

It took 10 years Dante to write this poem. Dante to write this poem.

The poem is divided into 3 sections (each section consisting of 33 verses); Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. In La Commedia, he recounts his journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise. Beatrice was the lover of Dante, who died too soon at the age of 25. Virgil (Roman poet) guides Dante through Inferno(hell) and Purgatorio(purgatory), while Beatrice guides him through Paradiso(heaven).

After that Dante comes face to face with God himself and the journey ends with true heroic and spiritual fulfillment.

The poem is written from Dante’s perspective and follows Dante’s journey through hell, purgatory, and final heaven. Dante the character in the poem is a fictional creation of Dante the poet. Dante’s journey through the afterlife was his spiritual journey.

English Victorian novelist George Eliot was born in rural Warwickshire. Her real name was Mary Ann Evans. George Eliot was her pen name. When her mother died, she left school to help run her father’s household. When her father died in 1849, she moved to London to pursue a career in journalism.

In 1850 she published a review for the Westminster Review and later in 1851 she became assistant editor of the Westminster Review. while in London she met many well-known people, henry Lewis was one of them. She fell in love with henry Lewis, a drama critic and author. Later they both decided to live together, their relationship caused a scandal because Lewis was already married to Agnes Jervis. Lewis encouraged her to write.

She published her first collection of short stories in 1858. After one year Her book Adam Bede was published. But in 1878 Lewis died.  Later in 1880, she married John Walter cross who was a banker, but due to a throat infection, she died the same year.

Notable works

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Silas Marner (1861)

Romola (1862–1863)

Middlemarch (1871–72)

Felix Holt (1866)

Daniel Deronda (1876)

Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)

Adam Bede (1859)

The Spanish Gypsy

 John Keats was born on October 31, 1795, in London, was an English romantic poet. he published fifty-four novels. He was the oldest of four children. His father was a livery-stable keeper. When he died Keats was only eight years old. After six years his mother also died.

Keats was a licensed apothecary but he never practiced his profession. Keats published his first volume of poem( poems by John Keats), in 1817.  In the same year his Endymion, a four thousand line erotic romance novel got published.in

July 1820 he published his third volume of poetry (Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of st. Angnes, and other poems).

Keats is also famous for his letters, His famous letters include; To Charles Cowden Clarke, To George and Thomas Keats, To Charles Cowden Clarke“, ”To Benjamin Robert Haydon.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art is one of his best poems, this poem written three year before his death.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

James Joyce is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. He is known for his unique and complex writing.

1. Your battles inspired me-not the obvious battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.

2. I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am what I established yesterday or some previous day.

3. First we feel. Then we fall

4. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. 

5. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.

6. The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.

7. There’s no friends like the old friends.

8. Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.

9.  All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light.

10. Absence, the highest form of presence.

James Joyce was born into a middle-class, catholic family on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland. He was the oldest of ten children who survived childhood.

After he completed his graduation in 1902, he went to Paris to study medicine, but he soon abandoned his study. He returns to Dublin when he received a telegram saying that his mother is deathly ill. After his mother’s died, he started teaching and writing book reviews.

 In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, who later became his wife. His first published book was chamber music( a collection of poetry). It took him 10 years to write Dubliners(a short story collection book), which was published in 1914.

On his 40th birthday, his famous novel Ulysses was published. The book is famous for its use of the stream of consciousness technique.

Joyce’s final book, Finnegans Wake was published in 1939, and like his other novels, it’s also considered puzzling because the book is written in several languages at once. Innovative use of symbolism, attention to language, and the use of interior monologue make him a great writer.

Some of his major works include Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man(It is a semi-autobiographical novel ), Exiles,(It is the only play by James Joyce, Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake.

John Keats was an English Romantic poet.

1. Touch has a memory.

2.  A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

3. Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.

4. I have been astonished that men could die martyrs

 for their religion–

I have shuddered at it

I shudder no more.

I could be martyred for my religion.

 love is my religion and I could die for that.

I could die for you.

 My creed is love and you are its only tenet.

5. Imagination is a monastery, and I am a monk.

6. We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

7. Don’t be discouraged by failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, in as much as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.

8. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

9. Life is divine chaos. It’s messy, and it’s supposed to be that way.

10. Poetry should..should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thought, and almost a remembrance.

“There are twin gates of sleep. one, theysay is called the gate of horn and it offers easy passage to all true shades. The other glistens with ivory, radiant, flawless, but through it the dead send false dreams up toward the sky. And here Anchises, his vision told in full, escorts his son and sibyl both and shows them out now through the ivory gate”.  -Virgilius

Publius Vergilius Maro was a roman poet, best known for his three major works- the Burcolics, the georgics, and the Aeneid. His first major work was eclogues, the poems in eclogues focus on the daily life of shepherd and shepherdesses. Eclogues is also called the Bucolics.

Virgil spent seven years writing the Georgics, it is considered one of his best poems. Aeneid is still regarded as a literary masterpiece, he spent eleven years working on Aeneid but he died before completing it. Aeneid is published two years after his death.

The gates of hell are open night and day;

Smooth the descent, and easy in the way;

But to return, and view the cheerful skies;

In this the task and mighty labor lies;

-Virgilus, the Aeneid

British novelist, journalist, editor, and illustrator Charles dickens is best known for his classic novels such as Oliver twist, a Christmas carol, a tale of two cities, and great expectations.

He was one of the most influential writers of his time. Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in England. His father was sent to prison for debt, at that time Charles was 12 years old, because of this he was forced to leave school and work in a boot polish factory. When his father pays off his debt, dickens was permitted to go back to school.

At fifteen he had to drop out of school to contribute to his family’s income. From 1830 he worked as a parliamentary and newspaper reporter, afterward, he began to write short stories .

Dickens first public story was “A Dinner at Poplar Walk”.in April 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth and in the same year dickens started publishing the posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club, from that point on there was no looking back for dickens.

On June 9, 1870, after suffering a stroke he died at his home. His main profession was a novelist, but he continued his journalistic work until the end of his life.

Emily Dickinson is considered as one of the greatest poets of all time. She was an American poet of the 19th century. Her full name is Emily Elizabeth Dickinson. She was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Emily’s younger brother Austin was an attorney and her younger sister’s name is Lavinia. She was not publicly recognized during her lifetime, her first public work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955.

Dickinson died in Amherst in 1886. After her death, her family discovered 40 handbound volumes of nearly 1,800 poems. 

Dickinson’s handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various size and directions, most of the poems has no tittle, only 10 of her almost 1800 poems were titled. She is best known for her use of slant rhyme, conceits, unconventional punctuation. Death is one of the main themes of her poems, she has also written about nature, faith, and love.

Dickenson breaks the accepted convention of using punctuation and rhyme in poetry. She is best known for her ability to describe abstract concepts with concrete images.