This September 14th will be the seven-hundredth anniversary of the death of the greatest poet of western literature, Dante Alighieri.

This claim of Dante’s position in literature, is more than the assertions of an Italophile. Eric Auerbach, the author of Mimesis, said that there is Dante and then all others. Michael Dirda notes that in the early part of the twentieth century, “one important writer after another argues strongly for Dante – even above Shakespeare – as the central figure of European literature, the linchpin of the great classical and Christian tradition of learning and culture.” For Italians, Italian-Americans, and Italophiles Dante bears even greater importance than the rest of the Western World.