by Dante Alighieri

The Divine Comedy is an epic poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed 1320, a year before his death in 1321.

It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language.

The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

FEATURES

Genuine Italian cowhide binding
22k gold spine
Gilded front cover
Gilded page edges
Archival-quality paper
New and original layout by cantos
Features the 1867 translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Includes six sonnets written by Longfellow about the Comedy
Interior woodcuts from the 1497 Venetian edition by Pietro Quarengi
A timeless literary classic

Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediæval miracle of song!

599 pages, leatherbound hardcover

Castalia Library

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