The Renaissance was a re-imagining of Classical Greece in a Christian European context, a spirit that would birth modernity. How did it start? Scholars argued that the Renaissance came about due to a perfect storm of structural factors. The build-up of commercial trade, the re-discovery of Greco-Roman thinkers, and the development of intellectual centers (such as universities and monasteries) were among the most important. In this talk to his Chinese high school students, Jiang Xueqin argues that it was Dante's Divine Comedy that would spark the confident self-expression and triumphant self-expression of the Renaissance.