Reading Dante: The Pursuit of Meaning examines the problem of thematic coherence in Dante's Divina Commedia. Unlike many Dante scholars who maintain that the poem's unity is the account of a journey through the afterworld, Jesper Hede argues that a systematic parallel reading of the poem's three parts (Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise) reveals that it is the vision of divine order that provides the poem with its thematic unity.

Reading Dante: The Pursuit of Meaning examines the problem of determining the thematic unity of Dante's Divina Commedia in the history of Dante studies. The question of unity has puzzled Dante readers for centuries, due to an apparent discrepancy between Dante's construction of the afterworld and medieval Christian teachings on the conditions of the afterlife. If all sins condemned in Hell can be forgiven, we would expect to see them purged in Purgatory and their virtuous opposite celebrated in Paradise. In Dante's account, however, the three realms of the afterlife appear as self-contained...