The Inferno

by Dante Alighieri

Overview

Step into the haunting world of The Inferno, Dante Alighieri’s timeless masterpiece that journeys through the nine circles of Hell. Written with searing imagination and profound moral vision, The Inferno explores the consequences of human sin and the eternal quest for redemption. This edition presents a vivid and accessible translation, preserving the power and beauty of Dante’s epic, making it perfect for both new readers and devoted scholars.

Journey through the shadows of the soul.

• Journey with Dante through the nine circles of Hell, encountering unforgettable portraits of sin, suffering, and divine justice.
• Experience a work that blends vivid imagination with profound philosophical and theological inquiry.
• Uncover Timeless Lessons on Justice, Morality, and Faith.
• Descend Through a Vivid Landscape of Sin and Redemption.
• Experience the Power of Allegory and Symbolism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781015393738
Publisher:	Legare Street Press
Publication date:	10/26/2022
Pages:	86
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Often considered as the Father of the Italian language, Dante Alighieri is best known for his epic poem the Divine Comedy. Born in 1265 in Florence, Republic of Florence, which is present-day Italy, Dante was an eminent Italian poet, prose writer, political thinker, and philosopher. The Alighieri family was involved in Florentine politics with loyalties towards the political alliance supporting Papacy. Dante was involved in the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict, and in the year 1289, he fought the Battle of Campaldino. He held numerous significant public offices at the time of political unrest but accomplished little as a politician. In the year 1302, Dante was exiled for life.
Dante travelled and wrote during his exile. The Divine Comedy was conceived during this period. Divided into three parts—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, it describes Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. A pre-eminent work of Italian literature, this fourteenth-century classic helped establish the Tuscan language.
Some of Dante’s other works include Convivio (The Banquet), De Monarchia, Le Rime (The Rhymes), and De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular). Dante died on his way back to Ravenna in the year 1321, aged fifty-six. 

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

"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

"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."

Guardian - Robert McCrum

"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."

The New Yorker - Joan Acocella

The only good Hell to be in right now is poet Mary Jo Bang's innovative, new translation of Dante's Inferno, illustrated with drawings by Henrik Drescher. Bang's thrillingly contemporary translation of the first part (the juiciest part) of Alighieri's 14th-century poem The Divine Comedy is indeed epic. . . . Once you embark on this journey, you may wish to read not only all of Mary Jo Bang's work but all of Dante's, too.” —Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

“Being an excellent poet in her own right, [Bang] succeeds in giving the Inferno's narrative drama an energetic idiom that gets the poem moving, and at times even dancing on the page. . . .The result is one of the most readable and enjoyable versions of the Inferno of our time.” —The New York Review of Books

“This will be the Dante for the next generation.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A transformative translation.” —The Millions

“Bang [dwells] in depths—not only in Dante's, but our own. . . . Bang's hell is our culture, the numbing proliferation of texts, images, meanings, interpretations. For her, the perfervid busyness of our culture leads to a deadening akin to spiritual numbness. Hence the allusions to everything from Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors to the Boy Scouts to frozen Jell-O to the Hotel California—these are the fragments that have shored up against our ruins, to borrow from T. S. Eliot, who knew a thing or two about Dante, and death, and fittingly appears several times in these pages.” —New York Daily News

“[Bang's] Inferno is a classic recast for our age, a hell we'll find ourselves in, an old poem made new by one of our most surprising and innovative poets.” —Craig Morgan Teicher, National Public Radio

“Wonderfully evocative to a contemporary reader. . . . Bang did something incredibly smart before she coaxed Dante's corpse to sit up and sing for us: She taught him how to talk like us. Hell is more appealing in the form of a mirror.” —The Stranger

“Mary Jo Bang's Inferno is quaking with aliveness. . . . [Her translation] will burn us all awake.” —Eileen Myles, The Poetry Foundations Harriet blog

“Mary Jo Bang's new translation of Dante's Inferno restores meaning to that old book-blurb cliche, 'startlingly original.' . . . Imagine a contemporary translation of Dante that includes references to Pink Floyd, South Park, Donald Rumsfeld, and Star Trek. Now imagine that this isn't gimmicky. . . . Imagine instead that the old warhorse is now scary again, and perversely funny, and lyrical and faux-lyrical in a way that sounds sometimes like Auden, sometimes like Nabokov, but always like Mary Jo Bang.” —BOMBlog

From the Publisher