 As a poet, Dante’s major theme, from first to last, is the significance of his love for Beatrice, but he also clearly understood himself to be a public intellectual strongly committed to raising the level of vernacular discourse. After his banishment he addressed himself to Italians generally, and devoted much of his long exile to transmitting the riches of ancient thought and learning, as these informed contemporary scholastic culture, to an increasingly sophisticated lay readership in their own vernacular.