The dates and sequence of Dante’s various works are only vaguely known. La Vita Nuova, which tells of his boyish passion for Beatrice, is probably the earliest. The most celebrated is La Commedia (which came to be known after his death as La Divina Commedia), a vision of hell, purgatory and heaven. He also wrote several shorter poems, as well as treatises on government and language.

Between 1280 and 1310, a new poetic movement was born known as the Stilnovo. The name was invented by Dante and is Italian for "new style". This new way to write poetry was founded by Guido Guinizzelli. The most important Stilnovo poets were Dante, his friend Guido Cavalcanti and Cino da Pistoia. This movement used the art of poetry to speak about love and to celebrate it. According to the Stilnovo theory, love is seen as an absolute ideal, which is able to save man and make him noble. Women are seen as angels and often celebrated as examples of purity and virtue. It meant that the work of art must see the content perfectly in harmony with the form. The poet had to use a precise and specific vocabulary to speak directly about love.

There was also a cultural debate waging at Dante’s time about the language to be used in literary works. The Questione della Lingua was about choosing either Latin or an Italian dialect (vernacular) to write the works. The Italian dialects were various since Italy was neither culturally nor politically united. Dante proposed a solution to this problem in De Vulgari Eloquentia.

Dante was thoroughly educated in both classical and Christian literature. By the time he was 18, he had already become interested in writing verse, sending an early sonnet to the poet Guido Cavalcanti. Dante also dedicated his first book to Cavalcanti.

• LA VITA NUOVA (1292)

The work, La Vita Nuova celebrated Dante’s love for Beatrice. The nature of his love had its roots in the medieval concept of "courtly love" and the idealization of women. This work was written within a short period of the death of Beatrice. Composed of sonnets and canzoni woven together with a prose commentary, this 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. The work begins with Dante’s first encounter with Beatrice, when she is nine years old. Nine years later she greets him. From that moment onwards, Dante decides to praise her in his poems.

La Vita Nuova is an anthology divided into 42 chapters and is written in Italian. The title means "new life" and is also a sort of poetical autobiography, which documents young Dante’s adherence to Stilnovo ideals. It transcends the Provincial 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.