Divine Comedy
Dante’s masterpiece of literature is well matched by the peerless art of Gustave Doré. Dante and his guides, Virgil and Beatrice, journey through the cantos in an allegory of the passage of the soul through the Afterlife, with the subtle engraving of Doré’s illustrations perfectly complementing the movement from darkness through to light.
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Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321) was a prolific poet born in Florence, Italy. Renowned for his epic poem The Divine Comedy, he is regarded as one of the central figures of Medieval European literature. A deeply reflective body of work, the allegory explores Dante’s spiritual journey through Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, which draws from Christian theology and philosophy. His vivid descriptions established him as the ‘Father’ of the modern Italian language, as he eschewed Latin in favour of the vernacular Tuscan dialect, bringing forth a new era of literature.
Gustave Doré (Illustrator): An artist who worked across many media, the multi-skilled Gustave Doré remains unequalled as a supremely talented illustrator, whose detailed and imaginative engravings for major works of literature – from Cervantes’s Don Quixote to Dante’s Divine Comedy, and even the Bible – have hugely influenced the way we see many cultural and literary characters and still inspire today.
Robin Kirkpatrick (Foreword) is Professor emeritus of Italian and English Literatures at the University of Cambridge. He was an undergraduate at Merton College, Oxford and has been a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge since 1978. He has written widely on Dante’s work, and his verse translation of the Commedia is published by Penguin in a variety of editions. Other of his writings include studies of Renaissance literature and volumes of his own poetry.