If you enjoyed the Inferno you might like Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, also available in Penguin Classics. It is believed that The Divine Comedy - comprised of three canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso - was written between 13. His first major work is La Vita Nuova (1292) an exercise in sonnet form constructed as a tribute to Beatrice Portinari, the great love of his life. Printed in English with facing pages in Dante's Italian, this edition offers commentaries and notes on each canto by Robert Kirkpatrick.ĭante Alighieri (1265-1321), scion of a Florentine family, mastered in the art of lyric poetry at an early age. It has had a particular influence on Modernist writers and their successors throughout the world. Portraying a huge diversity of characters culminating in a horrific vision of Satan, the Inferno broke new ground in the vigour of its language and storytelling.
Led by leering demons, the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit.
This Penguin Classics edition is translated and edited with an introduction and notes by Robin Kirkpatrick.ĭescribing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. Inferno is the first part of Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy, revealing the eternal punishment reserved for such sins as greed, self-deception, political double-dealing and treachery.
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