Dante is Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), an Italian poet. He is known above all for La Divina Commedia — The Divine Comedy — a long poem in which the speaker walks through Hell, then Purgatory, then Heaven. A guide, the poet Virgil, takes him through the dark parts; later Beatrice leads him toward God. It is one of the central works of European literature, and people still borrow its pictures: circles of Hell, a journey up toward the light. Comedy here does not mean jokes; in the old sense a comedy is a story that ends well, in blessedness, not in death. You will also hear Dante used as a first name, but this sense is the poet. When someone says a scene is Dantean, they usually mean it feels like his Hell: grim, ordered, and terrible.