ISBN The Inferno

The Inferno

Belonging in the immortal company of the works of Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri’s poetic masterpiece is a visionary journey that takes readers through the torment of Hell.

The first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy is many things: a moving human drama, a supreme expression of the Middle Ages, a glorification of the ways of God, and a magnificent protest against the ways in which men have thwarted the divine plan. One of the few literary works that has enjoyed a fame both immediate and enduring, The Inferno remains powerful after seven centuries. It confronts the most universal values—good and evil, free will and predestination—while remaining intensely personal and ferociously political, for it was born out of the anguish of a man who saw human life blighted by the injustice and corruption of his times.

Translated by John Ciardi
With an Introduction by Archibald T. MacAllister
and an Afterword by Edward M. Cifelli


About author(s)
Dante Alighieri, born in Florence, Italy, c. 1265, is considered one of the world’s greatest poets. His use of the Florentine dialect established it as the basis for modern Italian. His late medieval epic, The Divine Comedy, was above all inspired, as was all his poetry, by his unrequited love for Beatrice, a woman he may have seen only from afar. He died in 1321, having completed his great work, yet an exile from his native city.