Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / Italian; Poetry / Continental European; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.Norton edition has great articles to help explain the work and is a great translation.The other great translation is by Mark Musa."The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology.Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction.The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it.Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God.Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul.That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others.This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things).It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

No formatting
There's no line breaks in this work, which is essential to reading the poetry. You don't know where one line ends and the next line begins. ... Read more

Product Description
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is one of the most important and innovative figures of the European Middle Ages. Writing his Comedy (the epithet 'Divine' was added by later admirers) in exile from his native Florence, he aimed to address a world gone astray both morally and politically. At the same time, he sought to push back the restrictive rules which traditionally governed writing in the Italian vernacular, to produce a radically new and all-encompassing work. The Comedy tells the story of the journey of a character who is at one and the same time both Dante himself and Everyman. In The Inferno, Dante's protagonist - and his reader - is presented with a graphic vision of the dreadful consequences of sin, and encounters an all-too-human array of noble, grotesque, beguiling, ridiculous and horrific characters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Audacious journey
This is a review of the Nicholas Kilmer 1985 translation, illustrated by Benjamin Martinez.

There have been over 700 years of commentary on this classic, so I won't add anything original here. On the web search for "Dartmouth Dante Project" and you will find many. The reading is helped by added commentary, for example understanding the role of Beatrice or Francesca as heroine. The Dorothy Sayers translation offers more background information. The audaciousness of the poet to enter this realm of Biblical themes is remarkable, as his ability to garner sympathy for some of the sinners, such as Ugolino. Its fun to think where Dante would have placed some of today's public figures. Kilmer's translation is clear and straightforward, fairly modern sounding. For example contrast Kilmers(from Cantos XXiv):

Quicker than I cross t, dot i,
he kindled, burned, and falling down,
was completely changed to ashes

versus Sayers:

Never did writer with a single dash
Of the pen write "o" or "i" so swift as he
Took fire, and burned, and crumbled way to ash.

After I read the poem, I studied the dark illustrations by Benjamin Martinez and they present another view of the journey. ... Read more

Product Description
ERE Nessus yet had reach'd the other bank, We enter'd on a forest, where no track Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform'd And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns Instead, with venom fill'd. Less sharp than these, Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide Those animals, that hate the cultur'd fields, Betwixt Corneto and Cecina's stream.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.Norton edition has great articles to help explain the work and is a great translation.The other great translation is by Mark Musa."The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology.Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction.The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it.Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God.Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul.That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others.This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things).It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.
... Read more

Product Description
SO were mine eyes inebriate with view Of the vast multitude, whom various wounds Disfigur'd, that they long'd to stay and weep.

But Virgil rous'd me: "What yet gazest on? Wherefore doth fasten yet thy sight below Among the maim'd and miserable shades? Thou hast not shewn in any chasm beside This weakness. Know, if thou wouldst number them That two and twenty miles the valley winds Its circuit, and already is the moon Beneath our feet: the time permitted now Is short, and more not seen remains to see."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.Norton edition has great articles to help explain the work and is a great translation.The other great translation is by Mark Musa."The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology.Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction.The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it.Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God.Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul.That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others.This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things).It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.
... Read more

Product Description
THERE is a place within the depths of hell Call'd Malebolge, all of rock dark-stain'd With hue ferruginous, e'en as the steep That round it circling winds. Right in the midst Of that abominable region, yawns A spacious gulf profound, whereof the frame Due time shall tell. The circle, that remains, Throughout its round, between the gulf and base Of the high craggy banks, successive forms Ten trenches, in its hollow bottom sunk. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.Norton edition has great articles to help explain the work and is a great translation.The other great translation is by Mark Musa."The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology.Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction.The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it.Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God.Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul.That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others.This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things).It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.
... Read more

Product Description
For over seven centuries, Dante and his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, have held a special place in Western culture. The poem is at once a vivid journey through hell to heaven, a poignant love story, and a picture of humanity’s relationship to God. It is so richly imaginative that a first reading can be bewildering. In response, Peter Hawkins has written an inspiring introduction to the poet, his greatest work, and its abiding influence. His knowledge of Dante and enthusiasm for his vision make him an expert guide for the willing reader. ... Read more

Product Description
This is The Divine Comedy - Inferno by Dante Alighieri in it's original Italian with a line by line English Translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This edition has been carefully edited with an easy to use Table of Contents linking you to each Canto. Also included is a short synopsis at the end of each Canto. The original illustrations by Gustave Dore are inserted throughout. Because of the large amount of content, The Divine Comedy has been issued in 3 volumes. This is the first volume - Inferno - Hell. All three volumes have been issued simultaneously so you can acquire the complete set.

This is a sample of the easy to read dual language format used in this issue. Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in 3 line stanzas with triple rime and this format has been maintained throughout.

1. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
1. Midway upon the journey of our life

2. mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
2. I found myself within a forest dark,

3. che' la diritta via era smarrita.
3. For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

4. Ahi quanto a dir qual era e` cosa dura
4. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say

5. esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
5. What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,

6. che nel pensier rinova la paura!
6. Which in the very thought renews the fear.


7. Tant'e` amara che poco e` piu` morte;
7. So bitter is it, death is little more;

8. ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,
8. But of the good to treat, which there I found,

9. diro` de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.
9. Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

... Read more

Product Description
Many have made the journey. None have ever returned. Wandering through a dark forest, Dante finds himself at the gates to the underworld. Despite his terror, he dares to enter the Circles of Hell, where the damned lie in torment. As he descends deeper, he encounters wild-eyed sinners, sees the three-headed, howling hound Cerberus, and meets a long-dead prophet who foretells Dante's destiny. He passes through realms of fire and ice, and at last reaches the frozen heart of Hell where the hideous Satan, greatest of all the damned, lies in wait. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good introduction, but little else
The Penguin Epics selection of Dante is rather ungenerous--a little over half of Inferno is reproduced here in the subpar but entertaining Sayers translation.

This book includes the most famous sections of Inferno, which is only the first of the three canticles of Dante's Divine Comedy. How and why these sections were selected must remain a mystery, as there is no foreword or introduction to explain the selection process, only a brief note that will tell you nothing more than I have written here.

There are no notes, which may pose a problem to anyone unfamiliar with Dante or the mythological and historical figures to which he repeatedly refers. If you are looking for a highly readable and complete edition of The Inferno, check out the Mark Musa and Anthony Esolen translations.

Recommended as rainy day reading for anyone who already likes Dante. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

A thought provoking classic
"Educated people," say scholars, especially classical scholars who devote themselves to classical literature, "must read classics." Vita Nuova, one of Dante's earliest works, is such a classic. Yet while reading the classics clearly improves the reader's mind, no scholar would argue that reader must agree with what the author writes. Plato and Aristotle, the two great philosophers, are an example. The two have diametrically opposed worldviews and it is impossible to agree with both of them, except when a reader selects ideas from each; in which case these philosophers would say that the reader accepts the view of neither of them.
Dante, like all people, is searching for meaning in his life. He finds "all my bliss in Beatrice." He tells how his meeting with the metaphorical Beatrice, who later reappears in his Divine Comedy as his guide, and the Lord of Love changed his life. "Whatever happened before his `new life,'" writes the translator in his introduction, "is of no importance here."
This Dante notion is reminiscent of people who convert religions or who are "born again." But is this true? Should we accept the author's and translator's view? Does the past have no impact upon future life and thinking when a person converts? Or, do the past and new notions exist side by side, with the past exerting itself continually, creating a constant struggle. This is a question for readers to address while they read this fine book.

The Declaration of Independence ...
... of the individual, of individual self-consciousness. That's the "sense" -- proprioception -- implied in Dante Alighieri's The New Life, written circa 1293 when the poet was about 25 years old. I know it's a brash assertion, but I take La Vita Nuova to be the founding document of 'modern' literature. Dante himself declared as much in asserting the novelty of writing in 'spoken' language, i.e. Italian, rather than 'written' language, Latin, and scholars have always credited him with initiating Italian as a poetic language. Trouveres and troubadours had been writing their intricate fixed-form lais and ballades, in Provençal and French, for decades previously, but Dante had something more in mind. La Vita Nuova included his youthful sonnets and canzone, replete with formulaic chivalry, in La Vita Nuova, and then he did something revolutionary: he reflected upon himself in the act of creation. Each of the poems is set in a double context of prose, one part analyzing the 'poetics' as such, the mechanics of versifying, and the other depicting the poet's state of mind when he wrote, in the context of the events of his mortal life. That alone was novel enough, I think, to justify regarding La Vita Nuova as 'the birth of the modern'.

Paradoxically, for most people in the 21st C, Dante would be the epitome of Medievalism, the last verbose shudder of the Dark Ages. Well, yes, there's plenty that's quaint in La Vita Nuova, especially in this 1861 translation with its deliberately archaic syntax and vocabulary. Dante's 'defensiveness' about personifying Love -- in the philosophical terms of his time, an 'essence' rather than a 'substance' -- will seem like a moot question to most modern readers, and his obsession with numerology, with the number 9, will perplex us gravely. It may help to know that Dante was far less venerated in the centuries from 1300 to 1600 than in ours, and far less read than Petrarch. It was a shock to his audience when the late 16th C madrigalist Luca Marenzio set sonnets by Dante to the most daringly expressive chromatic music. Dante was never totally forgotten, of course, but it was German and English 19th C Romanticism that elevated him to literary Godhead. This translation, by the appropriately named Dante Gabriel Rossetti, played a large role in the shift in cultural taste in Europe, from the classicism of the Enlightenment to the neo-Medievalism of Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelites and of Richard Wagner. That historical 'hinge' is the only reason I could offer for choosing Rossetti's translation instead of the many more fluent versions that have followed. The Dover Thrift price is attractive, naturally, but Dover also publishes a bilingual "La Vita Nuova" for just a couple bucks more.

Hardcover edition is an Italian-only facsimile of an 1876 edition
The hardcover edition I purchased from Amazon (12/09) does not contain Cervigni and Vasta's new English translation of the Vita Nuova. Instead, it contains a facsimile ofCarlo Witte's 1876 _La Vita Nuova di Dante Allighieri. Ricorretta coll'ajuto di testi a penna ed illustrata_ (Leipzig, F.A. Brockhaus). This edition includes: an introductory note, a survey of extant MSS of the Vita Nuova, a survey of print editions of the Vita Nuova available circa 1876, tables of contents for the work as a whole and for the poetic compositions, and finally Witte's critical edition. Especially charming are the underlined passages and marginalia of some unknown reader of the particular text that got reprinted for this new edition.

I intended this book as a gift for a non-reader of Italian, who I thought would enjoy Dante's _libello_ on love, awakening, and transcendence. Clearly I'm going to have to find an alternative!

I can't imagine that this edition will be interesting to anybody but scholars of medieval Italian literature. Luckily, I happen to be one of those, so I'm keeping it.

good translation
I needed this book for an adult ed course. Easy to read with a clear introduction

Should have read this when I was 16!!!
I received this book when I was half-way through the Divine Comedy because that book was so good, but based on other opinions, I braced myself with the belief that this book would not be as good. Well, I read it in three days, after I finished the Divine Comedy, and there were so many great things about this story. Simply the fact that it gave some background information on the Divine Comedy was great enough, but the lyrical prose that surrounded Dante's 31 poems was stellar in addition to the great poetry. It was not only that, because this story was something I could relate to, except for the part when Beatrice dies. The reason behind this is that, even 700 years ago, gossip was still a large part of a person's experience as a child, which is something I think all of us have experienced at some time in our lives. This happens primarily in the first half of the book and reminds me of myself when I was a few years younger, as I am 18 years old, which is why it would have been great to read when I was 16, and which is why I recommend it especially for younger readers.

***Notes on Edition***
I was a little put off at first by the fact that the translator has the summary of the book at the beginning, meaning that if you read it, you cannot really find out what happens as you read it. However, after finishing the book, I found that it was actually helpful to understand the story better, as well as to trace the thematic elements through the book, such as the importance of the number 9, and the structure of the book. It then allowed me to refer back to it if I thought I might have missed something, which I would not have noticed otherwise. Plus, the translator, Musa, has provided notes at the end for parts of the story that might be alluding to historical insights, but I did not really understand that some of the notes were just a translation into the vernacular Italian. Nevertheless, it was still a great edition. However, one criticism that I do have was the fact that Mark Musa did not translate it in a fashion that mirrored how Dante had written it, which I had become accustomed to after reading Ciardi's translation of the Divine Comedy, but this is a small complaint that should not hinder your purchase of this wonderful story, no matter what translator you choose! ... Read more

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THE hue, which coward dread on my pale cheeks Imprinted, when I saw my guide turn back, Chas'd that from his which newly they had worn, And inwardly restrain'd it. He, as one Who listens, stood attentive: for his eye Not far could lead him through the sable air, And the thick-gath'ring cloud. "It yet behooves We win this fight"--thus he began--"if not-- Such aid to us is offer'd.--Oh, how long Me seems it, ere the promis'd help arrive!" ... Read more

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Publisher: London : J. M. Dent and co.Publication date: 1903Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

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FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. An informative introduction and commentary accompany this classic translation of Dante's epic poem about a spiritual pilgrim being led by Virgil through the nine circles of hell, available in a dual-language edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

A Classic for All
I have been put off reading The Divine Comedy for a long while before I finally picked it up off my shelf.I wish that I did not wait so long to take up this work.

The true beauty of the Inferno is the fact that it is both entertaining and intellectually fulfilling.The text has a history of mythology, history, and theology behind it that gives it such depth that the mind is entranced by the thought provoked by its words.Even though such weighty material lies behind Dante's work, it is also very much so entertaining, as it is ultimately an epic which tells a great tale.Because of both of these, the reader is engrossed in a tale which is truly edifying.It is difficult to put the work down because it is such a grand epic, and yet it is also very difficult to read it with out reflecting upon the nature of man.

For those who like me aren't as well versed in history and mythology as a translator like Mandelbaum, the endnotes are especially helpful.Armed with these, the reader is able to embark on a trip which is most fulfilling.I suggest this text to all.

Superior Edition of "Inferno" Available in English
I've read a couple of editions of Dante's "The Divine Comedy," but as far as the "Inferno/Hell" part of the trilogy is concerned, this is the only one I've read for the last half decade.

Alex Mandelbaum, then of the City University of New York, has given us a translation in English that is modern, yet retains the structure that lends the regal, somewhat alien feel of Alighieri's poetry.He sets the stage nicely in his introduction in which he reviews the person of Dante Alighieri and the work about to be presented.Next, Mandelbaum provides us the Cantos from "Inferno" with Alighieri's Italian on the left and his translation on the right.The text is annotated with references to endnotes for those interested.The haunting artwork of Barry Moser accompanies us, along with Dante and Virgil, on our trip through the rings of hell.

At the end of the translation are two articles, "Dante in His Age," a sort of contextual biography, and a critical article entitled "Dante as Ancient and Modern."Finally, there is the endnote material with useful expository information for those inclined to understand Dante's "Inferno" better.

One Of The Better Translations
Dante's Inferno is a truly magnificent piece of art that is deserving of an equally magnificent translation.For those of us who are unable to translate on our own, Allen Mandelbaum does a superb job of it on his own.Having both languages set side by side gives the reader a unique perspective and allows the reader to get a better feel for the flow of the poem.

The notes and asides that are provided are helpful but the essays at the end of each chapter leave something to be desired.If you are simply reading The Inferno for the pleasure of it then this is the version to get.If you are a scholar who is attempting to get a better understanding of Dante and his works than you may be better off finding a different version.

A great translation, but disappointing essays
Let's get to the meat of this book, first: Dante's epic tale of a man's journey through the levels of hell. Mandelbaum's translation is brisk and entertaining--he keeps the translation simple, making this book perfect for students and teachers alike. The great translation helps keep readers in suspense and enthralled.

I was a bit disappointed by the essays, though. I am not an academic--if you are, then good for you. I'm sure you'll make more sense out of Mandelbaum's writing than I did. Me, I'm a student, and I'm looking at this through a student's perspective. The essays were unreadable. Putting it in layman's terms would've been made this book a great asset to have--not only would we have the translated tale, but we'd also have some information on Dante himself, and a couple dissections of his work. Instead, we have the translation, and three other pieces of writing that we can't decipher.

That makes this edition of Dante's "Inferno" a hit-and-miss. If you're in it for the entertainment factor, or want to do your own analysis of his work, then this is for you. If you want to read what Mandelbaum thought about it...then, unless you have the patience and vocabulary of a Foreign Literature professor, you're out of luck.

Vivid, Accurate, Exciting Translation--notes a problem
What a wonderful Divine Comedy! I think many readers who inevitably stay away from "high" literature would enjoy this ever-deepening apex of literary art. The translated imagery, metaphors, similes especially capture Dante's genius. But significant problems with notes, which, though often detailed and helpful, are very, very weak on the religious aspects of this RELIGIOUS epic.Doesn'teven attempt explanations of allegories (This is per se an allegorical poem).For contrast see notes in Dorothy Sayers's translation that ventures explanations of allegory for modern reader. Mandelbaum's translation is superior to Sayers, but her notes are not just helpful, but essential for every reader. One surmises that translator is uncomfortable with allegorical truths of poem.IN ANY CASE, this translation is great--highly recommended-- unbelievably beautiful, entertaining, edifying and imaginatively/spiritually transcendent poem. Readit. ... Read more

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This is a retelling of Dante's Divine Comedy written especially for young people by poet, novelist and translator Joseph Tusiani. The author combines summary, paraphrase and Dante's own lines translated into English verse to tell a timeless story of sin and salvation. ... Read more

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Useful book for reading group
I was thrilled to find this re-telling of The Divine Comedy for young people.I plan to use this book in a junior high reading group that will be travelling to Florence later in the year.It is a quirky book, I found a few typos, but the re-telling of the story is perfect for my purpose.I highly recommend it, particularly for assigned, guided reading where there will be opportunity for clarification of confusing religious concepts. ... Read more

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My niece loves it!
I personally have not heard this audio drama, butpurchased this for my niece for whom I have given her the book of the same title.
When asked about her opinion about this audio drama her reply was "awesome". I hope that helped :D

Dante drive thru
This audio version of the Classic Inferno is only a single disc edition of the book. Even though it is dramatized this does not make up for its brevity.
However, if you just want a little taste of Inferno then this might be for you; just a one hour trip through hell. If you want the entire text on audio look elsewhere. ... Read more

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La Vita Nuova (1292–94) has many aspects. Dante’s libello, or “little book,” is most obviously a book about love. In a sequence of thirty-one poems, the author recounts his love of Beatrice from his first sight of her (when he was nine and she eight), through unrequited love and chance encounters, to his profound grief sixteen years later at her sudden and unexpected death. Linked with Dante’s verse are commentaries on the individual poems—their form and meaning—as well as the events and feelings from which they originate. Through these commentaries the poet comes to see romantic love as the first step in a spiritual journey that leads to salvation and the capacity for divine love. He aims to reside with Beatrice among the stars.

David Slavitt gives us a readable and appealing translation of one of the early, defining masterpieces of European literature, animating its verse and prose with a fluid, lively, and engaging idiom and rhythm. His translation makes this first major book of Dante’s stand out as a powerful work of art in its own regard, independent of its “junior” status to La Commedia. In an Introduction, Seth Lerer considers Dante as a poet of civic life. “Beatrice,” he reminds us, “lives as much on city streets and open congregations as she does in bedroom fantasies and dreams.”

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What has never been written of any other woman
Anyone who has read Dante's legendary "Divine Comedy" will know of his passion for a woman named Beatrice, who was his tour guide through heaven.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg, as "La Vita Nuova (The New Life)" shows in detail. This exquisite little book describes Dante's passion for Beatrice, and the emotional rollercoaster he went through as a result. This is Dante's unsung, more intimate masterpiece.

"La Vita Nuova" is a series of poems and anecdotes centering around the life-changing love of Dante for a young woman named Beatrice. The two first met when they were young children, of about eight. Dante instantly fell in love with her, but didn't really interact with her for several years.

Over the years, Dante's almost supernatural love only increased in intensity, and he poured out his feelings (grief, adoration, fear) into several poems and sonnets. During an illness, he has a vision about mortality, himself, and his beloved Beatrice ("One day, inevitably, even your most gracious Beatrice must die"). Beatrice died at the age of twenty-four, and Dante committed himself to the memory of his muse.

It would be a hard task to find another book overflowing with such incredible love and passion as "La Vita Nuova"; it's probably the most romantic book I have ever seen. Dante's feelings might seem creepy or stalkerish by modern standards, because Dante and Beatrice were never romantically involved. In fact, both of them married other people. But at the time, courtly love was considered the best, purest kind there is, and Dante's emotions are a perfect example of this.

But Dante's love for Beatrice shows itself to be more than infatuation or crush, because it never wanes -- in fact, it grows even stronger, including Love manifested as a nobleman in one of Dante's dreams. There is no element of physicality to the passion in "La Vita Nuova"; Dante talks about how beautiful Beatrice is, but that's only a sidenote. (We don't hear of any real details about her)

And Dante's grief-stricken state when Beatrice dies (of what, we're never told) leads him to deep changes in his soul, and eventually peace. And though Beatrice died, because of Dante's love for her and her placement in the "Comedia," she has achieved a kind of immortality.

One of the noticeable things about this book is that whenever something significant happens to Dante (good, bad, or neither), he immediately writes a poem about it. Some readers may be tempted to skip over the carefully constructed poems, but they shouldn't. Even if these intrude on the story, they show what Dante was feeling more clearly than his prose.

It's impossible to read this book and come out of it jaded about love or passion. Not the sort of stuff in trashy romance novels, but love and passion that come straight from the heart and soul. A true-life romance of the purest kind. ... Read more

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Beginning with Dante's liberation from Hell, Purgatory relates his ascent, accompanied by Virgil, of the Mount of Purgatory a mountain of nine levels, formed from rock forced upwards when God threw Satan into depths of the earth. As he travels through the first seven levels, Dante observes the sinners who are waiting for their release into Paradise, and through these encounters he is himself transformed into a stronger and better man. For it is only when he has learned from each of these levels that he can ascend to the gateway to Heaven: the Garden of Eden. The second part of one of the greatest epic poems, Purgatory is an enthralling Christian allegory of sin, redemption and ultimate enlightenment. ... Read more

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Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.Norton edition has great articles to help explain the work and is a great translation.The other great translation is by Mark Musa."The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology.Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction.The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it.Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God.Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul.That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others.This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things).It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

Book is for the more theologically minded
The book is a classic, and for those who are willing to spend time going through the explanations that follow the poem's text, it's an interesting read.In his poem, Dante comments on church history, theological topics like free will and determinism, and makes what were then scandalous comments about how there was corruption within the papal system of the time.It's tough to read, but if you are patient and interested in allegory on purgatory, it's for you!

Terrific spiritual classic
After seeing Dante referred to by so many Christian authors over the years, I finally decided I'd better read this "timeless spiritual classic."I was expecting a dry, dull slog.
Fortunately, I consulted a friend who is a Classicist.I told him I wanted to read Dante for spiritual value, not just as great literature (I'm no poetry expert, nor do I speak a word of Italian).He recommended Dorothy Sayer's translation.
Wow.Reading Dante during Lent is one long, detailed examination of conscience!It is great, and Sayers' explanations and commentaries are terrific: erudite, informative, drily witty, and full of spiritual insight.

Poetry even for us monoglots
Let's begin with Dante. Called "the divine poet" (hence the adjective attached to his humbly titled Commedia), it is a difficult moniker to argue with, not because Dante is writing of heaven but because his imagery, his imagination, and his humility are true imitations of the creative activity of God. Dante is a sublime "sub-creator" to use the coinage of JRR Tolkien. If you can read theCommedia and not be moved to tears, one is tempted to doubt your humanity for Dante portrays the race in all its beauty and putridness and denies neither. He neither celebrates mankind's faculties and achievements beyond their due nor fears to recognize the vileness of which humans are capable.

And it is Canticle II, the poet's ascent through Purgatory, which stirs so deeply the soul and inspires the very penitence and hope of purgation which Dante describes there. One need not be a Roman Catholic or ascribe to Purgatory as doctrine in order to recognize and appreciate what Dante has done in describing the landscape of repentance and hope. (Being a Christian may help, but even on this point one suspects that the divine poet may well perform the function of evangelist, as well as exegete, and lead the searching soul to beatific vision of its own.) Clearly his purpose is not merely to describe what sinners of the past are doing in the afterlife to purify their souls for Paradise, but also to inspire his contemporary readers (who are, of course, yet living when the poem is published in 1321) to examine themselves just as the joyful penitents do on the cornices of Mount Purgatory. It is refreshing--a sort of glorious wound, the healing of which leaves one stronger and more whole than he had been before the hurt.

But what of the translation? We who do not (yet) enjoy the privilege of reading the Commedia in Italian must read the poem in translation--and there are plenty to choose from! Given its primacy among the works of Western Literature in the Middle Ages, the poem has been translated by everyone from Dryden and Pope to Allen Mandelbaum and John Ciardi. So first of all, without question one MUST insist on a verse translation! Prose translations can hardly suffice to communicate the rhythm and terseness of Dante's terza rima which is so integral to the poem. Nor can the majesty of the subject, the grandeur of the poet's climb toward Paradise with all its anticipation and awe be fully communicated in a prose rendering. How well various attempts at verse have succeeded in doing so is the big debate.

In this reviewer's humble opinion, Dorothy L Sayers has succeeded to a degree which surpasses any extant English translation. Are there occasional awkwardnesses? Yes. Is the literal meaning of some lines lost from time to time? Yes, but always for the sake of a gain in some other important respect and always with explanation. Sayers' is the only translation of note which manages to render in English the full terza rima rhyme scheme employed by Dante--and even that feat is worth a few awkward passages or archaisms, it seems to me. One feels much closer to the Divine Poet reading Sayers' translation aloud than, say, Ciardi's half-attempted rhymes, lucid as he can often be.

Whatever else you do, read the Commedia--all of it! It is rather unfortunate that it has become common practice to publish the poem in three volumes rather than presenting it as an integrated whole. Though the familiarity of many ends with Inferno, those who press on I suspect will love Purgatorio best (but fortunately one is not forced to choose), and I am confident readers will be well rewarded for reading Sayers' brilliant translation. One would be hard pressed to find a translator who was more passionate about her subject and who labored more lovingly and meticulously over her rendering of this beloved work than Dorothy L Sayers.

DOROTHY L. SAYERS' GENIUS GLOWS IN HER TRANSLATION OF THE COMMEDIA
This project was her dying effort after a lifetime of great achievements in scholarship and literature. She again proves her genius here with Dante, as in her translation of the Inferno, making an intelligent translation into her contemporary and scholarly English. Incredible achievement for a woman, the first to graduate from Oxford, who wrote treatises in THeology as well as the wonderful Lord Whimsey detective series.

... Read more