A Beginner's Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

A Beginner's Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Author: Jason M. Baxter
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-03-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493413104

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.

Ascent to Love

Ascent to Love
Author: Peter J. Leithart
Publisher: Canon Press & Book Service
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2001
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1885767161

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.

A Modern Reader's Guide to Dante's The Divine Comedy

A Modern Reader's Guide to Dante's The Divine Comedy
Author: Joseph Gallagher
Publisher: Liguori Publications
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

The Divine Comedy has been a cornerstone of Western literature for the better part of a millennium. In this work, Joseph Gallagher brings the power and prestige of this medieval classic to a new generation of readers--taking them on a guided tour through heaven, purgatory, and hell. (Formerly titled To Hell and Back with Dante) Paperback

Dante's Divine Comedy

Dante's Divine Comedy
Author: Mark Vernon
Publisher: Angelico Press
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2021-09-03
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1621387488

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.

Dante For Beginners

Dante For Beginners
Author: Joe Lee
Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2011-12-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1934389684

Dante For Beginners takes the reader on a trip starting in hell and ending in heaven. The reader gets a quick introduction to Dante and his times. Next, the reader meets a sweet lass named Beatrice and samples a bit of his other literary offerings, such as the great feast, the Convivio. But then it’s on to the big one, the Commedia, and a canto by canto description of the entire work. Characters, ideas and situations are described as they happen—no searching through end notes, footnotes or field notes to distinguish Forese Donati, Dante’s pal, from his evil brother, Corso. The entire plan of the hereafter is simply mapped out. Dante For Beginners is a great vacation with history’s greatest tourist, Dante Alighieri.

Reading Dante

Reading Dante
Author: Giuseppe Mazzotta
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2014-01-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0300191359

divdivA towering figure in world literature, Dante wrote his great epic poem Commedia in the early fourteenth century. The work gained universal acclaim and came to be known as La Divina Commedia, or The Divine Comedy. Giuseppe Mazzotta brings Dante and his masterpiece to life in this exploration of the man, his cultural milieu, and his endlessly fascinating works.div /DIVdivBased on Mazzotta’s highly popular Yale course, this book offers a critical reading of The Divine Comedy and selected other works by Dante. Through an analysis of Dante’s autobiographical Vita nuova, Mazzotta establishes the poetic and political circumstances of The Divine Comedy. He situates the three sections of the poem—Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise—within the intellectual and social context of the late Middle Ages, and he explores the political, philosophical, and theological topics with which Dante was particularly concerned./DIV/DIV/DIV

Dante's Divine Comedy in Plain and Simple English (Translated)

Dante's Divine Comedy in Plain and Simple English (Translated)
Author: Dante Alighieri
Publisher: BookCaps Study Guides
Total Pages: 881
Release: 2013-02-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1621074919

Taking a literary journey through hell certainly sounds intriguing enough--and it is! If you can understand it! If you don't understand it, then you are not alone. If you have struggled in the past reading the ancient classic, then BookCaps can help you out. This book is a modern translation with a fresh spin. The original text is also presented in the book, along with a comparable version of the modern text. We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.

Everything You Need to Know about the Divine Comedy: a Study Guide for Dante's Classic

Everything You Need to Know about the Divine Comedy: a Study Guide for Dante's Classic
Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher:
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2013-11-08
Genre:
ISBN: 9781493706778

*Explains the major themes, characters, and plot of each part of the Divine Comedy. *Includes a summary and analysis of each cantica in the Divine Comedy. "But already my desire and my willwere being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars." - Dante, The Divine Comedy One of the surest signs of fame is to be known solely by one's first name, with the mention of just that first name making clear who is being spoken of. So it is with Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), known simply as Dante thanks to the success of the Divine Comedy, one of the seminal works in Western literature. With Divine Comedy, Dante is often considered the master of contemporary Italian, as well as a forerunner of the Renaissance, which began to flourish in Florence around the same time. The Divine Comedy tells of Dante's journey through Hell (the Inferno), Purgatory, and Paradise, guided by famous poets including Virgil. Dante's epic discusses religion, philosophy, and a wide range of subject matter throughout his travels. Dante took nearly 13 years to compose the Divine Comedy, all the while living in exile from his home city of Florence, and the work influenced just about every important writer any literary scholar can name, among them, Boccaccio (1313-75); Chaucer (circa 1344-1400); John Milton (1608-74); William Blake (1757-1827); Victor Hugo (1802-85); Joseph Conrad (Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski) (1857-1924); James Joyce (1882-1941); and Ezra Pound (1885-1972). One of the greatest poems in English, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, is in many ways derivative of Dante. Dante Alighieri, especially when one considers his time and environment, was bold and fearless, following the calling and mission of the artist in the purest sense. He not only took his contemporaries to task in an enormous fashion, he also embraced the timeless challenges that metaphysical questions present. Dante had the nerve to force his reader to question life's toughest mysteries, and offer at least one possible blueprint for redemption. His mind, his language and his contributions to art, culture and intellect remain unsurpassed. Everything You Need to Know About The Divine Comedy is a comprehensive guide that provides a synopsis, a description of the characters, and a summary and analysis of every chapter. You can use this as a guide while you read or as a way to brush up on everything you once knew and since forgot.

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity
Author: Prue Shaw
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2014-02-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0871407809

The best and most eloquent introduction to Dante for our time. Prue Shaw is one of the world's foremost authorities on Dante. Written with the general reader in mind, Reading Dante brings her knowledge to bear in an accessible yet expert introduction to his great poem. This is far more than an exegesis of Dante’s three-part Commedia. Shaw communicates the imaginative power, the linguistic skill and the emotional intensity of Dante’s poetry—the qualities that make the Commedia perhaps the greatest literary work of all time and not simply a medieval treatise on morality and religion. The book provides a graphic account of the complicated geography of Dante's version of the afterlife and a sure guide to thirteenth-century Florence and the people and places that influenced him. At the same time it offers a literary experience that lifts the reader into the universal realms of poetry and mythology, creating links not only to the classical world of Virgil and Ovid but also to modern art and poetry, the world of T. S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney and many others. Dante's questions are our questions: What is it to be a human being? How should we judge human behavior? What matters in life and in death? Reading Dante helps the reader to understand Dante’s answers to these timeless questions and to see how surprisingly close they sometimes are to modern answers. Reading Dante is an astonishingly lyrical work that will appeal to both those who’ve never read the Commedia and those who have. It underscores Dante's belief that poetry can change human lives.

The Doré Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy

The Doré Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy
Author: Gustave Doré
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2012-09-21
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0486129934

These 135 fantastic scenes depict the passion and grandeur of Dante's masterpiece — from the depths of hell onto the mountain of purgatory and up to the empyrean realms of paradise.