Dante - Divine Comedy
Divine Comedy / Divina Commedia
Description:... Described variously as the greatest poem of the European Middle Ages and,
because of the author's evangelical purpose, as the 'Fifth Gospel', Dante
conceived The Divine Comedy as a new epic of Christianity in which he creates a
universe in which reason and faith transform moral and social chaos into order.
Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, and furnished with
semi-autobiographical details, Dante's poem is a brilliantly nuanced and
emotionally moving allegory of human redemption, it examines human nature in
an extreme way, it's a very detailed and structured recount of the journey of
the moral character, who at one the same time is both the author and his reader,
through the three realms of the Christian afterlife, containing the most
emotionally moving lines literature has ever achieved.
In the present edition Henry Boyd's brilliant and authoritative translations of
Dante's three books or canticles, The Inferno, The Purgatorio and The Paradiso
and Henry Longfellow's widely-acclaimed and masterful blank verse translation of
The Divine Comedy, tracing the author's journey from Hell through Purgatory to
Paradise, have been gathered together and published for the first time in a
single volume, that aims to strike the perfect balance of tightness of translation
to the original and colloquialism, and that is likely to be the best modern version
of Dante, uniting poetry and scholarship in the very body of the translation,
a deeply-informed and structured version of Dante's work, that is a pleasure to read.
This volume contains all three parts of Dante's great poem about the journey of
the author's soul in a recent, contemporary English translation with the
complete collection of the rich historical, medieval illustrations by Priamo
della Quercia, Giovanni di Paolo, the maps from the works by Bernardino Daniello
da Lucca and the full-page illustrations, commissioned by Alessandro Vellutello,
constituting a truly complete edition of one of the world's greatest literary
masterworks, that should prove to be accessible to everyone and is definitely
the ideal edition for both literary scholars and readers, that only just became
acquainted with this great masterpiece of literature and for the first time gain
access to Dante's universe.
The present academic, non-commercial edition merges Henry Boyd's and Henry
Longfellow's translations into a brilliantly new, comprehensive edition and
contains the complete collection of historical, medieval illustrations in color.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic
or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system
without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of
very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other
noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. The authors and contributors of
the material in this edition deceased more than seventy years ago and according
to Copyright Law their copyrighted material is in the public domain.
Influential for seven centuries, this literary classic is a must-have and this
luxurious edition is a stunning addition to any library.
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