SOURCE: Ardizzone, Maria Luisa. “Guido Cavalcanti.” In The Dante Encyclopedia, edited by Richard Lansing, pp. 459-61. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000.

In the following essay, Ardizzone examines the importance of Cavalcanti to Dante and discusses the reasons for the break in their friendship.

Poet and aristocrat, friend of Dante, and ardent Guelf, Cavalcanti was born between 1250 and 1255 and later married a daughter of Farinata degli Uberti. He composed one of the most difficult philosophical poems in the Italian language, the canzone Donna me prega. Because his death occurred in August 1300, after the fictive date of Dante's vision, he does not appear in the Commedia.

Cavalcanti is described as philosopher and speculativus … auctoritatis non contemnendae in physicis (“a thinker of no mean authority on the natural sciences”) by a tradition that includes Giovanni and Filippo Villani, and by Giovanni Boccaccio as a filosofo naturale (“natural philosopher”), an Epicurean, and...