Dante Alighieri is one of the greatest poets in world history. His brilliant epic, "The Divine Comedy", an imagined journey through Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, continues to captivate readers. This work provides an information on his life and work. It covers Dante's canon, including his love poems in "La Vita Nuova" and his philosophical works.
Dante's Divine Comedy is widely considered to be one of the most significant works of literature ever written. It is renowned not only for its ability to make truths known but also for its power to make them loved. It captures centuries of thought on sin, love, community, moral living, God's work in history, and God's ineffable beauty. Like a Gothic cathedral, the beauty of this great poem can be appreciated at first glance, but only with a guide can its complexity and layers of meaning be fully comprehended. This accessible introduction to Dante, which also serves as a primer to the Divine Comedy, helps readers better appreciate and understand Dante's spiritual masterpiece. Jason Baxter, an expert on Dante, covers all the basic themes of the Divine Comedy, such as sin, redemption, virtue, and vice. The book contains a general introduction to Dante and a specific introduction to each canticle (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), making it especially well suited for classroom and homeschool use.
As one of the supreme Christian epic poems, Dante's Divine Comedy provides not only far more personality and emotional depth than the pagan epics, it also opens up all the issues on which Western history turns - truth, beauty, goodness, sin, sanctification, and triumph. For all that, C.S. Lewis loved the Comedy for its seemingly effortless poetry. In this guide Peter Leithart uses a biblical angle to open up the Comedy for students, high school and up. He begins his discussion by examining the meaning and place of the courtly love tradition and then introduces us to the varied levels of meaning throughout the work. In the heart of the guide, Leithart walks us carefully through the craft and symbolism of each progressive stage - Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each section contains helpful study questions.
Dante Alighieri was early in recognizing that our age has a problem. His hometown, Florence, was at the epicenter of the move from the medieval world to the modern. He realized that awareness of divine reality was shifting, and that if it were lost, dire consequences would follow. The Divine Comedy was born in a time of troubling transition, which is why it still speaks today. Dante's masterpiece presents a cosmic vision of reality, which he invites his readers to traverse with him. In this narrative retelling and guide, from the gates of hell, up the mountain of purgatory, to the empyrean of paradise, Mark Vernon offers a vivid introduction and interpretation of a book that, 700 years on, continues to open minds and change lives.
"e;Life of Dante"e; brings together the earliest accounts of Dante available, putting the celebratory essay of literary genius Giovanni Boccaccio together with the historical analysis of leading humanist Leonardo Bruni. Their writings, along with the other sources included in this volume, provide a wealth of insight and information into Dante's unique character and life, from his susceptibility to the torments of passionate love, his involvement in politics, scholastic enthusiasms and military experience, to the stories behind the greatest heights of his poetic achievements.Not only are these accounts invaluable for their subject matter, they are also seminal examples of early biographical writing. Also included in this volume is a biography of Boccaccio, perhaps as great an influence on world literature as Dante himself.
Beginning with the early masters of the sonnet form, Dante and Petrarch, the Companion examines the reinvention of the sonnet across times and cultures, from Europe to America. In doing so, it considers sonnets as diverse as those by William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, George Herbert and e. e. cummings. The chapters explore how we think of the sonnet as a 'lyric' and what is involved in actually trying to write one. The book includes a lively discussion between three distinguished contemporary poets - Paul Muldoon, Jeff Hilson and Meg Tyler - on the experience of writing a sonnet, and a chapter which traces the sonnet's diffusion across manuscript, print, screen and the internet. A fresh and authoritative overview of this major poetic form, the Companion expertly guides the reader through the sonnet's history and development into the global multimedia phenomenon it is today.