Dante in his own life, and in this epic, represents a 'party of one', desirous of purifying the Church on the one hand, and the Holy Roman Empire on the other, yet caught between those two great worldly powers, and turning to literature to make his voice heard.įrom the summit of Purgatory, Dante ascends in the Paradiso, guided by Beatrice, into the celestial Paradise, where love, truth and beauty intertwine in his great vision of the Christian revelation.

Through the depths of Hell in the Inferno, and upwards along the mountain of Purgatory in the Purgatorio, Dante is guided by Virgil, the great poet of the Classical Roman Empire, exploring, as he does so, the political, ethical and religious issues of his time. This, the first 'epic' of which its author is the protagonist and his individual imaginings the content, weaves together the three threads of Classical and Christian history contemporary Medieval politics and religion and Dante's own inner life including his love for Beatrice, to create the most complex and highly structured long poem extant. The Divine Comedy is Dante's record of his visionary journey through the triple realms of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Del Duca)Ĭantos XV-XXI (Free Will, Nature of Love, Adrian, Hugh Capet,Statius)Ĭantos XXII-XXVIII (Forese, Bonagiunta, Souls, Guinicelli, Arnaut, Matilda)Ĭantos XXIX-XXXIII (The Divine Pageant, Beatrice, Lethe, Eunoë)Ĭantos I-VII (The Moon, Piccarda, Mercury, Justinian, Romeo)Ĭantos VIII-XIV (Venus, Cunizza, Folco, The Sun, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Dominic, Francis, Solomon, Mars)Ĭantos XV-XXI (Cacciaguida, Florence, Jupiter, The Eagle, Saturn, Peter Damian )Ĭantos XXII-XXVIII (Benedict, Gabriel, Peter, Paul, James, John, Angels)Ĭantos XXIX-XXXIII (The Empyrean, The River, The Rose, Bernard, The Virgin, The Final Vision) De Born)Ĭantos XXIX-XXXIV (Griffolino, The Giants, Circle IX, Ugolino, Satan)Ĭantos I-VII (Casella, Manfred, La Pia, Buonconte, Sordello )Ĭantos VIII-XIV (The Gate, Nino, Oderisi, Salvani, Sapia, G.

Each Canto is arranged in paragraphs, with each paragraph headed by the corresponding line reference in the Italian text.Ĭantos I-VII (Virgil, Circles I-IV, Paolo & Francesca, Ciacco)Ĭantos VIII-XIV (Circles V-VII, Farinata, Pier delle Vigne, Capaneus)Ĭantos XV-XXI (Brunetto Latini, Geryon, Circle VIII, Manto)Ĭantos XXII-XXVIII (Vanni Fucci, Ulysses, G.

The Text is fully hyper-linked to the index and notes and vice versa. Listen Now Narrated by Jack Wynters of Wyntersea ProductionsĮach sub-section is an arbitrary division, typically of seven Cantos.

Dante the divine comedy