Inferno

by Dante Alighieri, Henry Francis Cary (Translator), Claire Honess (Introduction)

Overview

Translated by H.F. Cary With an Introduction by Claire Honess.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is one of the most important and innovative figures of the European Middle Ages. Writing his Comedy (the epithet ''Divine'' was added by later admirers) in exile from his native Florence, he aimed to address a world gone astray both morally and politically. At the same time, he sought to push back the restrictive rules which traditionally governed writing in the Italian vernacular, to produce a radically new and all-encompassing work.

The Comedy tells the story of the journey of a character who is at one and the same time both Dante himself and Everyman. In the Inferno, Dante''s protagonist - and his reader - is presented with a graphic vision of the dreadful consequences of sin, and encounters an all-too-human array of noble, grotesque, beguiling, ridiculous and horrific characters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781853267871
Publisher:	Wordsworth Editions, Limited
Publication date:	01/28/1998
Series:	Wordsworth Collection Series
Edition description:	Wordsworth Collection Edition
Pages:	203
Product dimensions:	4.98(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence to a family of minor nobility. He entered into Florentine politics in 1295, but he and his party were forced into exile in a hostile political climate in 1301. Taking asylum in Ravenna late in life, Dante completed his Divine Commedia, considered one of the most important works of Western literature, before his death in 1321.

Michael Palma has published six collections of original poetry and nearly twenty books of translations of modern and contemporary poets. He has received numerous awards, including the Italo Calvino Award from the Translation Center of Columbia University. His most recent book is Faithful in My Fashion: Essays on the Translation of Poetry. He lives in Vermont.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	IX
	Acknowledgments	XIX
	The Plan of Dante's Hell	XXI
	Inferno	I

Editorial Reviews

"The freedoms James takes allow him to get off some beautiful phrases…James is a poet, doing a poet's work…[He] is also a premier practitioner of the high-low style that became so popular in the nineteen-twenties, notably via Eliot and Pound, which is to say, in part, via Dante."— Joan Acocella The New Yorker

"Seeking to preserve Dante's 'infinitely variable rhythmic pulse,' James makes an inspired metrical choice…The greatest virtue of James's translation is his gift for infusing poetry in the least likely places…James's austere volume achieves something remarkable: It lets Dante's poetry shine in all its brilliance."— Joseph Luzzi New York Times Book Review

"An extraordinary verse-rendering—the fruit of many years' work—of Dante's The Divine Comedy…[James] has not only tackled this Everest of translation, but has scrambled to the summit in triumph."— Robert McCrum Guardian

From the Publisher