The Divine Comedy (Amazing Values) - Hardcover

Dante's Divine Comedy is one of the most highly regarded works of world literature and a classic that continues to inspire fiction and poetry today. Written between 1308 and 1321, the three books of this epic poem- 'lnferno', 'Purgatorio' and 'Paradiso'- tell the story of the poet's personal journey through the afterlife, an odyssey that leads him from his wanderings in the spiritual wilderness to a paradise shaped by Divine love. This edition of The Divine Comedy features the classic translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It also features more than one hundred engravings by Gustave Dore, long considered the greatest artist to illustrate Dante's timeless masterpiece.

Born in 1265 in Florence, from which he was banished in 1302, dying in Ravenna in 1321, Dante set the Divine Comedy in the year 1300, when he was thirty-five years old and 'in the middle of our mortal life'. The setting allows him to utilise the past symbolically, exploit the present politically and anticipate the future in simulated prophecy.