Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Early Years 2. Dante and Guido Cavalcanti 3. Disaster 4. The First Years of Exile 5. Language and Poetry 6. Invitation to a Banquet 7. Main Dishes and Trenchers 8. The True Definition of Nobility 9. Injustice and Avarice 10. Dante the Showman 11. The Return of Beatrice 12. The Story Begins 13. Limbo 14. Francesca da Rimini 15. Dante in Danger 16. Dante the Taxonomist 17. Creation of Character. 18. Down into the Depths 19. 'Him of Alagna' 20. Virgil and Sorcery 21. Devil-Play 22. A Den of Thieves 23. Tongues of Fire 24. The Severed Head 25. The Valley of Disease 26. Towering Giants 27. The Frozen Lake 28. Lucifer 29. The Tragedy of Henry VII 30. Better Waters 31. The Morning Sun 32. From Humour to Invective 33. Close of Day and a New Dawn 34. Pride and Humility 35. Evil and the Freedom of the Will 36. Love, Natural and Rational 37. The Mountain Trembles 38. Dante and Forese Donati 39. Body and Soul 40. The Christian Sibyl 41. Who is Matilda? 42. Dante and hisPatrons 43. Prelude to Paradiso 44. Beatrice in Heaven 45. Propaganda in Paradiso 46. The City Walls 47. Justice Unfathomed 48. Dante and Monasticism 49. The Theme's Great Weight 50. Faith, Hope and Love 51. Hatred in Heaven 52. The Creation 53. The Departure of Beatrice 54. Approach to the Final Vision 55. The Vision of the Trinity Epilogue Appendices Chronology of Dante's Life and Works Guelfs and Ghibellines List of Popes in Dante's Lifetime Holy Roman Emperors Referred to by Dante The Canzone Notes Select Index

Promotional Information

Dante is one of the world's towering literary geniuses and yet perhaps the most enigmatic, with many puzzles remaining about his turbulent life. Now Barbara Reynolds, a leading expert on Dante, in this her acclaimed biography, pieces together the many mysterious clues scattered throughout Dante's works, including his masterpiece The Divine Comedy.

About the Author

Barbara Reynolds is one of the world's best known Dante scholars. She completed the Penguin translation of Paradiso after the death of Dorothy L Sayers. She also translated Dante's early work 'La Vita Nuova' and Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso'. In addition, she has written a biography of Dorothy L Sayers and edited 'The Cambridge Italian Dictionary'.

Reviews

A lavish vita, it is also an extraordinarily vivid and incisive chronicle of the dynamics and titanic clashes in Italian and European political life at the time … It is a detailed cultural and intellectual map of the times, and a gripping intertextual reading of Dante’s works, interlacing fine scholarly detail with the universal themes and emotions that have made Dante’s words almost archetypal for Western consciousness ... Never dryly archaeological, invariably intelligent, this is a riveting account of Dante the man in all his manifestations.
*Bookanista*