Dante's The Divine Comedy still provides one
of life's great literary experiences. Of the many internet
sources, try the Encyclopaedia
Britannica for a scholarly introduction, the Columbia
University's Digital
Dante and Dante
on the Web sites for an extensive listing of material,
and the magnificent Princeton Dante
Project to see what multimedia can achieve. You will
also need to understand Dante's world, and the Georgetown
University's Labyrinth
resource and Dante's
Realm should start you off. Also useful is Dante
and Virgil.
Reading Dante
Everyone tries their hand at Dante translations,
The Divine Comedy by Robert
Pinsky et al and Purgatorio by W.S. Merwin being
the best known of recent attempts, though see also A.S.
Kilne's. The translations generally recommended are
The Divine Comedy by Charles Singleton (1975) and
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri by John Sinclair
(1958). Non-Italian speakers should try listening to The
Divine Comedy read
in the original, and work with one of the many parallel
texts. For terza
rima in English see Shelley's Triumph
of Life, Byron'sProphecy of Danteand Morris'sDefence of Guenevere.
For bibliographies start with: The Princeton Encyclopedia
of Poetry and Poetics entries on Italian poetry and terza
rima, the Everyman Library's edition of The Divine Comedy
(1995), the Princeton Dante
Project, and the Encyclopaedia
Britannica entry. Scattered references are to be found
in The
Internet Medieval Sourcebook. A useful guide is A Concordance
to the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (1965) by Edward
Sheldon and Alain White. Poets should try: Dante the Maker
by Charles Anderson (1980) and The World of Dante: Essays
on Dante and his Times (1980) by Cecil Grayson.
