The Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri(1308)
Novelc. 450 pages
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
One great work, every day
by Dante Alighieri(1308)
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Dante Alighieri(1308)
Dante began in a dark wood at midlife, traveled through Hell and Purgatory, and arrived in Paradise, guided by Virgil and then by Beatrice. The poem took him perhaps twenty years to write; he completed it just before his death in exile from the Florence that had condemned him. It contains everything: theology, politics, astronomy, gossip, vengeance, and love that moves the sun and other stars. Every canto is a world. Generations of readers have found their lives illuminated by this poem. It is the summit of medieval literature and the foundation of modern Italian.