Most of the images that accompany my discussion are by Priamo della Quercia, Giovanni di Paolo, Sandro Botticelli, Gustav Doré and William Blake. 'Professor Esolens translation of Dantes Inferno is the best one I have seen, for two reasons. I recommend the translation by Mark Musa in the Penguin Classics edition, both for its accessibility and notes. An extraordinary new verse translation of Dantes masterpiece, by poet, scholar, and lauded translator Anthony Esolen. There you will also find other talks and discussions.

In addition to my new book, follow every step of the way on YouTube or via the films below, or MP3 via the podcast, Dante’s Divine Comedy. I believe Dante can help us discover how. We must see the world afresh and understand. Many today, too, are waking up to something that’s gone wrong.

He begins his journey by waking up in a dark wood. Dante’s years of exile were years of difficult peregrinations from one place to anotheras he himself repeatedly says, most effectively in Paradiso XVII, in Cacciaguida’s moving lamentation that bitter is the taste of another man’s bread andheavy the way up and down another man’s stair. I invite you to experience the odyssey, by accompanying me as I discuss each canto. The plot of The Divine Comedy is simple: a man, generally assumed to be Dante himself, is miraculously enabled to undertake an ultramundane journey, which leads him to visit the souls in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. “A delightful companion”, Iain McGilchristĭante explicitly said that the great Divine Comedy was not designed to celebrate a medieval vision of reality, but rather was to inform a modern one for the future. Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide For The Spiritual Journey is published by Angelico Press.

Dantes the divine comedy