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.
Excerpt from Dante and Beatrice Every commanding personality has some one characteristic that colours all others, permeates all. In Sara Wiley Drummond, ardour was this quality. She seemed incarnate youth, one whose hope, energy, and fire could not be quenched by any weariness, or care, or grief. One purpose bound together all the diverse and eager interests of her life. Hers was the poet's great desire, hers the poet's noble satisfaction. With humility she moved, as was meet in the follower of great masters, and yet with dignity as a labourer in a high calling. Not for an instant did she doubt her task, and into it she threw an enthusiasm and a courage such as are never content with easy achievement. Born to ease, she counted all the fair surroundings of Use adjuncts, pleasant, at times powerful, but to be dismissed without a thought if need were. Her delight in luxuries was as candid as the enjoyment of a child, her indifference to them was superb. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
A stunning 3-in-1 deluxe edition of one of the great works of Western literature An epic masterpiece and a foundational work of the Western canon, The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as his guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and reunion with his dead love, Beatrice; and, finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire, and enlightenment and furnished with semiautobiographical details, Dante's poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption. This acclaimed blank verse translation is published here for the first time in a one-volume edition. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Excerpt from Dante, Beatrice, and the Divine Comedy I. The Commentators and the necessity for lectureships on the Divine Comedy. II. The profession of the Scribe in the time of Dante and Petrarch. III. The Printer and the early editions of the Poem. IV. The Poet and the Vita Nuova. V. Who was Beatrice? VI. Dante and Beatrice. VII. Body and Spirit. VIII. Dante's Bones. Portions of Chapters VII. And IX. Have already appeared in Notes and Queries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Excerpt from Dante and Beatrice: A Play Alberigo: Good martial music, brother. It reminds me of my military days. Before I took the habit It makes my hair creep - that is. It makes me fancy that my head is still untonsured. Catalano It makes me feel that I would like to dance and sing and rejoice - ih the Lord! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
A richly detailed graveyard history of the Florentine poet whose dead body shaped Italy from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the Risorgimento, World War I, and Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. Dante, whose Divine Comedy gave the world its most vividly imagined story of the afterlife, endured an extraordinary afterlife of his own. Exiled in death as in life, the Florentine poet has hardly rested in peace over the centuries. Like a saint’s relics, his bones have been stolen, recovered, reburied, exhumed, examined, and, above all, worshiped. Actors in this graveyard history range from Lorenzo de’ Medici, Michelangelo, and Pope Leo X to the Franciscan friar who hid the bones, the stone mason who accidentally discovered them, and the opportunistic sculptor who accomplished what princes, popes, and politicians could not: delivering to Florence a precious relic of the native son it had banished. In Dante’s Bones, Guy Raffa narrates for the first time the complete course of the poet’s hereafter, from his death and burial in Ravenna in 1321 to a computer-generated reconstruction of his face in 2006. Dante’s posthumous adventures are inextricably tied to major historical events in Italy and its relationship to the wider world. Dante grew in stature as the contested portion of his body diminished in size from skeleton to bones, fragments, and finally dust: During the Renaissance, a political and literary hero in Florence; in the nineteenth century, the ancestral father and prophet of Italy; a nationalist symbol under fascism and amid two world wars; and finally the global icon we know today.
A sparkling translation that gives new life in English to Dante’s Vita Nuova, his transcendent love poems and influential statement on the art and power of poetry, and the most widely read of his works after the Inferno A Penguin Classic Dante was only nine years old when he first met young Beatrice in Florence. Loving her for the rest of his life with a devotion undiminished by even her untimely death, he would dedicate himself to transfiguring her, through poetry, into something far more than a muse—she would become the very proof of love as transcendent spiritual power, and the adoration of her a radiant path into a “new life.” Censored by the Church, written in the Tuscan vernacular rather than Latin, exploding the courtly love tradition of the medieval troubadours, and employing an unprecedented hybrid form to link the thirty-one poems with prose commentary, Vita Nuova, first published in 1294, represents both an innovation in the literature of love and the work of Dante’s that brings this extraordinary poet into clearest view. This limpid new translation, based on the latest authoritative Italian edition and featuring the Italian on facing pages, captures the ineffable quality of a work that has inspired the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Baudelaire, T. S. Eliot, Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Penn Warren, and Louise Glück, and sustains the long afterlife of a masterpiece that is itself a key to the ultimate poetic journey into the afterlife, The Divine Comedy. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Dante's Comedy has become a literary monument but first and foremost it is an engaging and vividly imagined story of a personal journey. Dante, the narrator, through encounters with the souls of dead people, masterly and completely etched in their earthly persona, especially in the Inferno, holds our attention even after so many years, so many stories and despite Dante's world view having become meaningless to us and his faith alien to many of us too.
