According to WMR, the poem was begun early, perhaps before 1848. It was still being written in May 1849: WMR's diary for 15 May mentions that DGR “read his poem (in progress) intended as introductory to the ” ( Fredeman, , 3 ). Although WMR says it may not have been completed until 1852 ( , 647n ), it was certainly in some kind of final state by 16 February 1850, for at that point—as WMR's own diary shows—it was being considered for publication in (under the title : , 55 ). In November it had been read and much praised by Coventry Patmore ( , 77-78 ).

It may have then been revised or augmented or both in preparation for its inclusion in the projected , which was scheduled for publication in 1861 or 1862 as a companion volume to . DGR cancelled plans to publish the volume of his original poems, however, and buried this poem with several others in his wife's grave after her death early in 1862.

DGR had the manuscript of the original version of the poem exhumed from his wife's grave in late 1869. This text was then printed in the at the end of October 1869, and DGR then set about revising the work as it passed through various proof states. After its publication in the first edition of the 1870 , it was further revised in small particulars through the next six editions of that volume, and a new stanza was added when the poem was reissued in the 1881 .

DGR planned a painting to illustrate this poem but only completed some preliminary sketches ca. 1852 [sketch 1,sketch 2, sketch 3,sketch 4]. The completed picture would have formed the third panel of a major Dantean work, .

See Commentary (Reception) for the 1870 .

“The exiled Dante descending a flight of stairs with eyes lowered, is stared at by the court jester. Other figures are roughly sketched on the left” ( Surtees, , 20) .

First set in type in the , pulled in late October 1869 from the exhumed manuscript. The text was then reprinted and revised through the subsequent proof states toward its eventual first publication in the 1870 . It was reprinted and collected thereafter.

The poem centers in the period of Dante's second sojourn in Verona (ca. 1314-1318) after his exile from Florence in 1302. It recovers and glances at various events of the period of Dante's life (1265-1321), in particular events associated with Florence and the factional struggles that occurred in Italy and her cities.

The subject of also functions as a kind of objective correlative for the situation of the artist in mid-Victorian England. A satiric investigation of Verona's cultural condition, it necessarily also casts these satirical reflections forward to DGR's own country and culture.

The poem represents itself—through its first epigraph—as a revisionary reading of Canto XVII of Dante's . In a sense the poem is a revelation of the prophetic words that Cacciaguida spoke to Dante but that, according to Canto XVII, were not made part of the prophecy incorporated in Canto XVII (see lines 91-96 of Canto XVII). Aware of the received historical tradition that Dante was an enthusiast of Can Grande's generosity and intelligence, DGR's poem comes as a revelation of a fuller and very different truth. As such, it clearly seeks to align itself with the prophetic character of the itself, and especially with its political attitudes and objects.

The presence of the anecdote recorded in lines 295-306 is important for helping to correct the widespread and mistaken view that DGR and his father read Dante in opposite ways. While it is true that Gabriele Rossetti downplayed the historical Beatrice in favor of an arcane allegorical meaning, and DGR focused on the historical lady, their methods of reading Dante have much in common. First of all, by recalling this recondite story in the poem DGR illustrates his father's general approach to reading Dante as secret political allegory. It also (secretly) deploys Gabriele Rossetti's most notorious exegetical method: reading for double-meanings via plays on words and syntactical ambiguities. Gabriele Rossetti's oblique presence in this poem underscores an influence that most scholars of DGR's works have failed to recognize. In fact, when DGR came to publish his 1870 , where this work figures so prominently, the only family member who stands out in the book is Gabriele Rossetti. (DGR includes two sonnets that relate to his father's Dantist studies— is particularly pointed—and he went out of his way to wrap his book in a secret paternal sign: the decorated endpapers reproduce paper that Gabriele Rossetti brought with him to England when he was exiled from Italy.)

The poem's chief antecedent English text is Byron's , which also takes up the question of the function of the artist in society in the form of a prophetic satire. Carlyle's lecture on Dante, published in (1840), is also a clear influence. Of DGR's works, and besides translations, the relevant texts are the contemporary socio-political commentaries and . Equally important related texts are and . All of these are works that date back to the late 1840s.

Everything Dantean that DGR wrote or executed pictorially has autobiographical significance, since he strove to reimagine Dante's life and work as a mythic forecast of his own life and work.

Boos, , 134-140. Ellis, , 108-112. Gregory, , 135. Hayward, , 165-174. Howard, , 20-27. Masefield, , 8-10. Ray, , 23-26. Spangenberg, . , 647.