The Divine Comedy: Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso (Everyman's Library)

This beautiful hardcover edition—containing all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—includes an introduction by Nobel Prize-winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli's marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations.

The Divine Comedy
begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.

Allen Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Everyman’s Library Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

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798 pages

Average rating: 7.08

12 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

Anonymous
Dec 28, 2023
10/10 stars
The Divine Comedy taught me a few things: 1) the 1st circle of hell sounds like the place to be, lots of poets and artists (i.e. the interesting people); 2) people have been asking "why god whyyyyyy" for a very long time; 3) 700 years old this poem id, and it still reads fresh! 4) enlightenment is fleeting, stupidity lasts forever.
margardenlady
Dec 27, 2023
6/10 stars
This journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven is fascinating. I think that much of it could be an enhancement of Italian history (lots of name dropping) and might even serve as a catechism of sorts. I was thankful that I have a familiarity with Greek and Roman mythology and also with Christianity. Without that, this would have been tough to follow. Dante’s very careful creation of these imagined worlds and their various levels was very carefully crafted. I think a study of a few Cantos at a time might be quite insightful, but all the worship of Mary got a little wearying for this Protestant.

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