Reference
- Dante AlighieriDante Alighieri is universally admired as one of the greatest writers in Western culture. His Divine Comedy stands as perhaps the most significant text in medieval European literature...
- The Divine ComedyItalian poet Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy is one of the seminal works of Western culture and the unrivaled greatest literary text of the European Middle Ages. The poem is epic in scope, telling the story of a lost traveler who, to find his way back to his true home, must journey through the three realms of the medieval Christian afterlife—Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The pilgrim Dante's trek is also an allegory of the soul journeying toward God, and of the political Everyman groping toward social stability and peace...
- Dante, AlighieriFlorentine poet (1265-1321). His extensive debts to and complex engagement with the classical world are emblematically captured in Virgil's unexpected role in the Divine Comedy (Divina commedia, 1306/1307-1321) as guide through the first two realms, Hell and Purgatory, of the Christian afterlife. His choice of the Roman poet highlights the strength of the bonds that Dante believed united pagan antiquity and the Christian era, the two epochs forming complementary parts of a single providential plan for humanity's salvation...
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Dante: The First Renaissance Man
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This documentary explores the work of Dante Alighieri including his cultural and religious influences of the time period, his innovations in the world of literature, and how he impacted other artists, sculptors and writers. Martin Hossick reveals how the author of “The Divine Comedy” established individualism and morality for every man in a period when only rulers and religious figures mattered.
Online Resources
- Dante: BritannicaDante, in full Dante Alighieri, (born c. May 21–June 20, 1265, Florence [Italy]—died September 13/14, 1321, Ravenna), Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy)...
- Dante Alighieri: Poetry FoundationItalian poet and scholar Dante Alighieri is best known for his masterpiece La Commedia (known in English as The Divine Comedy), which is universally considered one of world literature’s greatest poems. Divided into three sections—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—The Divine Comedy presents an encyclopedic overview of the mores, attitudes, beliefs, philosophies, aspirations, and material aspects of the medieval world...
- The Divine Comedy: BritannicaThe Divine Comedy, Italian La divina commedia, original name La commedia, long narrative poem written in Italian circa 1308–21 by Dante. It is usually held to be one of the world’s great works of literature. Divided into three major sections—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—the narrative traces the journey of Dante from darkness and error to the revelation of the divine light, culminating in the Beatific Vision of God...
- THE DIVINE COMEDY: Project GutenbergRead Dante's most famous work online.
- Going through Hell? See Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” in Art: National Gallery of ArtItalian poet Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy (La Commedia) more than 700 years ago. It describes one man’s journey through the afterlife, telling a timeless story about love, faith, and justice. Dante has inspired everyone from French sculptor Auguste Rodin to British draftsman William Blake. You can see how different artists have imagined the story below and in our exhibition, Going through Hell: The Divine Dante, on view from April 9 to July 16.
Dante - The Divine Comedy
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowA powerful introduction to the greatest work of medieval literature, which draws upon new dramatic filmed sequences, contemporary images and the work of artists inspired by Dante’s epic voyage of the imagination. This stirring film provides the ideal starting point for the study of this major work.
Perspectives
Dante
Dante brings the legendary author--and the medieval Italy of his era-- to vivid life, describing the political intrigue, battles, culture, and society that shaped his writing. Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy has defined how people imagine and depict heaven and hell for over seven centuries. However, outside of Italy, his other works are not well known, and less still is generally known about the context he wrote them in. In Dante, Barbero brings the legendary author's Italy to life, describing the political intrigue, battles, city and society that shaped his life and work. The son of a shylock who dreams of belonging to the world of writers and nobles, we follow Dante into the dark corridors of politics where ideals are shattered by rampant corruption, and then into exile as he travels Italy and discovers the extraordinary color and variety of the countryside, the metropolises, and the knightly courts. This is a book by a serious scholar with real popular appeal, as evidenced by its bestseller ranking in Italy. It is a remarkable piece of forensic investigation into medieval Italian life.
Dante Encyclopedia
The Dante Encyclopedia is a comprehensive resource that presents a systematic introduction to Dante's life and works and the cultural context in which his moral and intellectual imagination took shape.
Dante and the Medieval Other World
A major study of the Divine Comedy, this book offers an interesting perspective on Dante's representation of the afterlife. Alison Morgan departs from the conventional critical emphasis on Dante's place in relation to learned traditions by undertaking a thorough examination of the poem in the context of popular beliefs. Her principal sources are thus not the highly literary texts (such as Virgil's Aeneid or Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae) which have become a familiar context for the poem, but rather visions of the Other World found in popular writings, painting and sculpture from the centuries leading up to its composition. The book will be of interest to non-specialists in addition to scholars of Dante, since it offers a clear preliminary account of the Other World tradition, a chronology of its principal representations and summaries of the major texts. Fully illustrated throughout, it integrates with the literary and theological aspects of Dante's heritage the important but often neglected dimension of art history.
Dantes Style Lyric Poetry
A very close and clear description of Dante's style in those lyric poems, which can be dated with reasonable confidence. Dr Boyde explains the nature and objective of his analyses in the substantial introduction which does not assume any previous knowledge of the poems or of modern stylistic theory. He has three principal aims: first, to relate the style of the poems to medieval rhetorical teaching; secondly, to assess the degree of Dante's stylistic originality by comparison with the style of earlier medieval authors; and thirdly, to provide an accurate detailed description of the many developments in Dante's style over a period of twenty years. Close attention is paid throughout to the frequency and distribution of the features described, and there is abundant quotation of examples. The book will have a considerable theoretical interest to all those concerned with the analysis of the style of literature from the past.
Dante's Purgatory
Mark Musa again brings his poetic sensitivity and his skill as a translator to the difficult task of making Dante's masterpiece live for English-speaking readers. His rendering of the Purgatory is distinguished by the same flexible iambic verse, the same dignified understatement, and the same elegant clarity that characterizes Dante's own lofty and complex style. Musa's extensive annotation as well as his prose introduction to each of the cantos reveal the hand of the careful scholar and craftsman.
Dante: The Life and Work of Dante Alighieri
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Most notable for his vast poem, The Divine Comedy, Dante’s work continues to resonate with audiences today. Filmmaker Malcolm Hossick uncovers the Italian poet’s background and his influential work from the Renaissance period.
Dante: Visions of the Inferno
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowDrawing upon the insights of numerous international scholars—and illustrating crucial passages with stunning animation sequences—this program guides viewers through the Inferno of Dante’s Divine Comedy. With detailed analysis of the poet’s descent into hell and navigation through its various levels, the program interprets Dante’s motives for embarking on such a journey, explains his relationship and interaction with both Virgil and Beatrice, and describes the complex mixture of morality and humanism within the work—embodied in Dante’s attitude toward those who inhabit the realms of the dead. (Portions in Italian and French with English subtitles, 74 minutes)