Table of Contents

The Divine ComedyHow to Read Dante
Translator's Note
The Inferno
Introduction
Cantos

The Purgatorio
Introduction
Cantos

The Paradiso
Introduction
Cantos

About the Author

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265. Considered Italy's greatest poet, this scion of a Florentine family mastered the art of lyric poetry at an early age. He is the author of the three canticles, The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso. Politically active in Florence, he was banished to Italy in 1302. In 1274, he met the great love of his life, Beatrice, whom he immortalized in La Vita Nuova (1292) and The Divine Comedy. He died in 1321.

Reviews

“Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them—there is no third.”—T.S. Eliot

“Ciardi has given us...a credible, passionate persona of the poet, stripped of the customary gauds of rhetoric and false decoration, strong and noble in utterance.”—Dudley Fitts
 
“A sensitive and perceptive translation…a spectacular achievement.”—Archibald MacLeish

“I think [Ciardi’s] version of Dante will be in many respects the best we have seen.”—John Crowe Ransom