The Divine Comedy

This man is one who, from the deepest void in all the universe, has seen thus far' Informed by a profound belief in the dignity and compassion of humanity, and influenced by the turbulent society of thirteenth-century Italy, Dante's Commedia is one of the most extraordinary visions of sin and redemption in literature. A work of boundless invention and vast intellectual synthesis, it broke new ground with the vigour of its language and storytelling. The three parts of the Commedia chart the spiritual and physical journey of Dante: in the Inferno he descends into a freezing Hell with the Roman Virgil as his guide, in Purgatorio he climbs Mount Purgatorio and is reunited with his lost love Beatrice and, finally, in Paradiso, he ascends to heaven and a sphere beyond space and time. This new edition brings together the three volumes of Robin Kirkpatrick's acclaimed translation of the Commedia, with a new introduction discussing the work in the context of Florentine politics, its experimental techniques and later influence, and the figures of Virgil and Beatrice. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading, maps, diagrams and notes on each canto. Translated and edited with an introduction and notes by Robin Kirkpatrick

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and belonged to a noble but impoverished family. His life was divided by political duties and poetry, the most of famous of which was inspired by his meeting with Bice Portinari, whom he called Beatrice,including La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy. He died in Ravenna in 1321. Robin Kirkpatrick is a poet and widely-published Dante scholar. He has taught courses on Dante's Divine Comedy in Hong Kong, Dublin, and Cambridge where is Fellow of Robinson College and Professor of Italian and English Literatures.