Other editions of book The Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy is an epic poem divided into three parts, which describe Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, respectively.In Inferno, the spirit of Roman poet Virgil leads Dante's avatar, the Pilgrim, through the circles of Hell to witness the punishments of sinners.In Purgatory, the Pilgrim meets the souls of those who have achieved salvation as they pay penance for their sins, a process they must undergo before they can ascend to Heaven.In Paradise, the Pilgrim reaches Heaven. After witnessing the majesty of God in his true glory, the Pilgrim returns to Earth and writes The Divine Comedy.Dante’s The Divine Comedy is the beginning of Italian literature and the single most significant work of the Middle Ages because its allegory emphasizes the importance of salvation and divine love in a work that is inclusive and tightly structured. It is so thoroughly infused with Christian ethics that any overview has to touch on major Christian themes, beginning with the plot being set during Easter week 1300.The work is a complex narrative with many allusions to biblical stories, classical myths, history, and contemporary politics; however, the plot’s symbolism provides clarity in that it celebrates the ideal of universalism, where everything has its place in God’s world, and its ultimate goal of salvation triumphs over the contemporary reality of the power struggle between worldly and religious leaders.The structure of the entire work, as well as of its parts, is symbolic of the story it tells, as the use of numbers shows. The number 3 (symbolic of the Trinity: God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost) and the number 10 (the “perfect” number: 3 × 3 + 1) are the most conspicuous examples. The Divine Comedy has three “cantiche,” or parts (Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven). Each cantica has thirty-three cantos, or songs, with the exception of the first cantica, which has thirty-four cantos, adding up to a total of one hundred (the perfect number squared: 10 × 10). Each canto is written in terza rima, that is, in tercets that rhyme in an interlocking manner.The first canto of Inferno, is considered to be an introduction to the whole work (making the structure even more symmetric: 1 + 33 + 33 + 33 = 100) because all three parts of The Divine Comedy are present in the first canto’s symbolic landscape. Dante finds himself lost in a dark forest. Looking for orientation, he decides to hike up a mountain, whose sunlit top represents Purgatory, while the sky and the sun represent Heaven. However, Dante’s path is blocked by three animals on the mountain’s slope: a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf, which represent the three main types of sin that correspond to the three main divisions of Hell.The spirit of Virgil appears and promises to get Dante to salvation the long way: through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Dante’s doubts are assuaged because Virgil has been sent by three heavenly ladies (the Virgin Mary, Saint Lucy, and Beatrice); in the combination of human reason with divine grace, Dante’s salvation may yet be achieved. After they enter Hell in the third canto, Dante learns through conversations with Virgil and individual souls that each sin is punished according to its severity, systematically going from the lighter sins of incontinence (giving in to one’s desires) to the more severe sins of violence (actively willing evil) and fraud (adding malice). Hell, which is presented as a huge funnel-shaped underground cave, extends in ever-smaller and more-constricting circles to the middle of the earth; there, in the pit of hell, sits Satan himself, forever stuck frozen in the ice of the lake Cocytus, chewing on the three worst human traitors: Judas, Brutus, and Cassius.