Most Popular Books by Dante Alighieri

It also includes extracts from a wealth of poems inspired by his work - including Spenser''s Faerie Queen, Milton''s Paradise Lost, Ezra Pound''s Cantos and T. S. Eliot''s The Waste Land.

The poem discusses "the state of the soul after death and presents an image of divine justice meted out as due punishment or reward",[4] and describes Dante''s travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

The final volume in a masterful new translation of the Divine Comedy follows the spiritual pilgrim as he puts behind him the horrors of Hell and the trials of Purgatory to ascend to Paradise, where he encounters his beloved Beatrice and meets the Heavenly Court and the Lord.

This startling new translation of Dante''s Inferno is by Ciaran Carson, one of contemporary Ireland''s most dazzlingly gifted poets. Written in a vigorous and inventive contemporary idiom, while also reproducing the intricate rhyme-scheme that is so essential to the beauty and power of Dante''s epic, Carson''s virtuosic rendering of the Inferno is that rare thing—a translation with the heft and force of a true English poem. Like Seamus Heaney''s Beowulf and Ted Hughes''s Tales from Ovid, Ciaran Carson''s Inferno is an extraordinary modern response to one of the great works of world literature.

At the pinnacle of a grand and prolific career, W. S. Merwin has given us a shimmering new verse translation of the central section of Dante''s Divine Comedy -- the Purgatorio. Led by Virgil, inspired by his love for Beatrice, Dante makes the arduous journey up the Mountain of Purgatory, where souls are cleansed to prepare them for the ultimate ascent to heaven. Presented with the original Italian text, and with Merwin''s notes and commentary, this luminous new interpretation of Dante''s great poem of sin, repentance, and salvation is a profoundly moving work of art and the definitive translation for our time.

IN the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct: and e''en to tell It were no easy task, how savage wild That forest, how robust and rough its growth, Which to remember only, my dismay Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

A Latin treatise on secular and religious power by Dante Alighieri, who wrote it between 1312 and 1313. The great Italian poet turns his hand to political thought and defends the reign of a single monarch ruling over a universal empire. He believed that peace was only achievable when a single monarch replaced divisive and squabbling princes and kings.

The poem discusses "the state of the soul after death and presents an image of divine justice meted out as due punishment or reward",[4] and describes Dante''s travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

The second part of Dante''s Divine Comedy, following the Inferno, and preceding the Paradiso. The poem was written in the early 14th century. It is an allegory telling of the climb of Dante up the Mount of Purgatory, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, except for the last four cantos at which point Beatrice takes over as Dante''s guide. Purgatory in the poem is depicted as a mountain in the Southern Hemisphere, consisting of a bottom section (Ante-Purgatory), seven levels of suffering and spiritual growth (associated with the seven deadly sins), and finally the Earthly Paradise at the top. Allegorically, the Purgatorio represents the penitent Christian life. In describing the climb Dante discusses the nature of sin, examples of vice and virtue, as well as moral issues in politics and in the Church. The poem outlines a theory that all sins arise from love - either perverted love directed towards others'' harm, or deficient love, or the disordered or excessive love of good things.