 Among Dante’s contemporaries, however, the single strongest influence on his early poetry was Guido Cavalcanti, renowned not only as a poet, but also for his knowledge of natural philosophy. His great canzone, “Donna mi prega,” which became the subject of learned Latin commentaries, deals with ideas commonly associated with the “radical Aristotelianism” or “Averroism” of his day. The purpose of this astonishing poem is to describe in precise philosophical terms (“naturale dimostramento”) the experience of love.