The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri Volume 2 Purgatorio [Paperback]

In the early 1300s, Dante Alighieri set out to write the three volumes which make the upThe Divine Comedy. Purgatoriois the second volume in this set and opens with Dante the poet picturing Dante the pilgrim coming out of the pit of hell. Similar to theInferno(34 cantos), this volume is divided into 33 cantos, written in tercets (groups of 3 lines). The English prose is arranged in tercets to facilitate easy correspondence to the verse form of the Italian on the facing page, enabling the reader to follow both languages line by line. In an effort to capture the peculiarities of Dante's original language, this translation strives toward the literal and sheds new light on the shape of the poem. Again the text ofPurgatoriofollows Petrocchi'sLa Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, but the editor has departed from Petrocchi's readings in a number of cases, somewhat larger than in the previousInferno, not without consideration of recent critical readings of theComedyby scholars such as Lanza (1995, 1997) and Sanguineti (2001). As before, Petrocchi's punctuation has been lightened and American norms have been followed. However, without any pretensions to being critical , the text presented here is electic and being not persuaded of the exclusive authority of any manuscript, the editor has felt free to adopt readings from various branches of the stemma. One major addition to this second volume is in the notes, where is found theIntercantica- a section for each canto that discusses its relation to theInfernoand which will make it easier for the reader to relate the different parts of theComedyas a whole.

'This new edition of Inferno is distinctly user-friendly....Serious students-in or out of the classroom-who...examine the original poem alongside a readable and reliable prose translation will find this edition excellently suited to their needs.'

-The Christian Science Monitor