III.

La Vita Nuova

Dante's first important literary work, La vita nuova, was written not long after the death of Beatrice. It is composed of sonnets and canzoni woven together with a prose commentary. The work narrates the course of Dante's love for Beatrice, his premonition of her death in a dream, her actual death, and his ultimate resolve to write a work that would be a worthy monument to her memory. La vita nuova clearly exhibits the influence of the love poetry of the Provençal troubadours and represents the finest work of the dolce stil nuovo (“sweet new style”) of contemporary Florentine vernacular poetry. It transcends the Provençal tradition in that it not only describes the poet's love in terms of a lofty idealism but suggests a spiritual significance in the object of his adoration. La vita nuova, in its sustained intensity of feeling, is one of the greatest verse sequences in European literature.