The Divine Comedy, Volume 3: Paradise

by Dante Alighieri, Dorothy L. Sayers (Translator), Dorothy L. Sayers (Introduction), Barbara Reynolds (Translator), Barbara Reynolds (Introduction)

Overview

The third volume of Dante's Divine Comedy

To the consternation of his more academic admirers, who believed Latin to be the only proper language for dignified verse, Dante wrote his Comedy in colloquial Italian, wanting it to be a poem for the common reader. Taking two threads of a story that everybody knew and loved – the story of a vision of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, and the story of the lover who has to brave the Underworld to find his lost lady – he combined them into a great allegory of the soul’s search for God. He made it swift, exciting and topical, lavishing upon it all his learning and wit, all his tenderness, humour and enthusiasm, and all his poetry. In Paradise, Dante journeys through the encircling spheres of heaven towards God.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140441055
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/30/1962
Series:	Divine Comedy , #3
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	78,424
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.74(h) x 0.68(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265. Considered Italy's greatest poet, this scion of a Florentine family mastered in the art of lyric poetry at an early age. His first major work is La Vita Nuova (1292) which is a tribute to Beatrice Portinari, the great love of his life. Married to Gemma Donatic, Dante's political activism resulted in his being exiled from Florence to eventually settle in Ravenna. It is believed that The Divine Comedy—comprised of three canticles, The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso—was written between 1308 and 1320. Dante Alighieri died in 1321.

Barbara Reynolds, retired lecturer in Italian at Cambridge University, holds three honorary doctorates. She translated Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso for Penguin Classics and finished Dorothy L. Sayers’s translation of Dante’s Paradise after Sayers’s death.

What People are Saying About This

Robert Fagles

Exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths.

T S Eliot

The Divine Comedy is a complete scale of the depths and heights of human emotion...The last canto of the Paradiso is to my thinking the highest point that poetry has ever reached or ever can reach.

Archibald MacLeish

A spectacular achievement...A text with the clarity and sobriety of a first-rate prose translation which at the same time suggests in powerful and unmistakable ways the run and rhythm of the great original."

Hugh Kenner

The English Dante of choice.

Editorial Reviews

The English Dante of choice.” –Hugh Kenner

“Exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths.” –Robert Fagles, Princeton University

“A marvel of fidelity to the original, of sobriety, and truly, of inspired poetry.” –Henri Peyre, Yale University

From the Publisher

Dante's Divine Comedy has inspired artists from Giotto down to the present. Perhaps among the most beautiful illustrations are those of the 15th-century Sienese painter Giovanni di Paolo, who illuminated a Paradiso manuscript for the library of the King of Naples, now in the British Library as Yates-Thompson MS 36. Pope-Hennessy, the noted British art historian, presents reproductions of di Paolo's 61 illuminations in a large format and in full color. He includes a lucid historical introduction and a commentary on the content of each of the miniatures. This book also includes Charles Singleton's prose translation of the Paradiso . This is a wonderful gift for the student of Dante and the lover of art.-- T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.

Library Journal

Tough and supple, tender and violent . . . vigorous, vernacular . . . Mandelbaum's Dante will stand high among modern translations.

Christian Science Monitor