The second volume of Dante's epic, printed with the original Italian and Robin Kirkpatrick's sublime translation
Climbing out of Hell, Dante in the Purgatorio reaches an island set in the southern ocean. This is Mount Purgatory, where he encounters the penitents who heroically endure their sufferings and speak of their time on Earth. Strange and fresh at every turn, Dante's narrative evokes the mountain landscape in terms of intense physical sensation, right up to the summit. There, before rising to heaven, he enters the Earthly Paradise, where he is movingly reunited with...

The radiant climax to Dante's awe-inspiring epic, in a definitive new translation
Having plunged to the utmost depths of Hell and climbed Mount Purgatory in the first two parts of The Divine Comedy, Dante now ascends to Heaven, guided by his beloved Beatrice, to continue his search for God. As he progresses through the spheres of Paradise, he grows ever closer to experiencing divine love in the overwhelming presence of the deity. Examining eternal questions of faith, desire, and enlightenment, Dante exercised all of his learning and wit, wrath and tenderness in his creation...

Robin Kirkpatrick addresses questions such as Dante's attitude towards Virgil, and demonstrates how the early work known as the Vita Nuova is a principal source of the literary achievement of the Comedy. His detailed study reveals how the great narrative poem explores the relationship that Dante believed to exist between God as creator of the universe and the human being as a creation of God. First Edition Hb (1986): 0-521-32809-8 First Edition Pb (1986): 0-521-30533-0

This book represents a major re-assessment of Dante's Inferno, and of the place which the Inferno occupies in the plan of the whole Commedia. On evidence drawn also from the Paradiso and Purgatorio, Dr Kirkpatrick argues that Dante's thinking and poetry are subject to far greater internal tension than is commonly supposed. He then proceeds to analyse each of the thirty-four cantos of the Inferno, and to relate each canto in turn to its thematic and narrative context. Throughout, Dr Kirkpatrick is particularly concerned with features of language and structure which scholars have tended to...

In this 1978 book, it is Dr Kirkpatrick's contention that critics have yet to present a satisfactory account of Dante's originality in the Paradiso. We shall best appreciate the Paradiso, he argues, if we recognise that poetry can not only dramatise thought, but also offer a thorough analysis of religious and philosophical belief. Considering Dante's own discussions of poetry and language in the Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia, Dr Kirkpatrick claims that, for Dante, direct and careful statement is itself a special responsibility of the poet. This attitude is shown in detail to conflict...

Dante's epic-in a stunning new clothbound edition.
Describing Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, the "Inferno" depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasing torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, the poet must journey with Virgil to the heart of Hell-for it is only by...

This text examines the influence Italian and English writers have had on each other and looks at both the similarities and the differences between the two literary traditions. The historical, social and intellectual developments between the two countries in the early Renaissance are explored.

Challenging some of the popularly-held views on the Renaissance period, this book draws equal attention to the strangeness and often unresolved tensions that lay beneath the surface of that culture. Insisting on a European rather than purely Italian viewpoint, it embraces Renaissance thinking and culture in all its diversity.