Purgatorio : The Divine Comedy Series : Volume 2

Purgatorio : The Divine Comedy Series : Volume 2
ISBN: 9780140448962
Publication Date: 1 August 2007

In Purgatorio Dante, having described his journey into Hell, narrates his ascent of Mount Purgatory with Virgil, as he encounters penitents who toil through physical agonies, starvation and flames to assuage their earthly vices.

Only by learning from them can he achieve his final enlightened transition to the lost Earthly Paradise at the mountain's summit, where he meets his dead love, Beatrice, and prepares to ascend to Heaven.

Depicting a realm of intense sensation and physical experience, Dante's poem transformed the traditional Christian idea of Purgatory by showing how the free will of the aspiring soul could change wordly perversions into perfection. It is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human possibility, hope and redemption.

Kirkpatrick brings a more nuanced sense of the Italian and a more mediated appreciation of the poem's construction than nearly all of his competitors." -The Times(London)

About The Author Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and belonged to a noble but impoverished family. He followed a normal course of studies, possibly attending university in Bologna, and when he was about twenty he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had several children. He had first met Bice Portinati, whom he called Beatrice, in 1274, and when she died in 1290, he sought distraction by studying philosophy and theology and by writing La Vita Nuova.

During this time he became involved in the strife between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines; he became a prominent White Guelf, and when the Black Guelfs came to power in 1302, Dante, during an absence from Florence, was condemned to exile. He took refuge first in Verona, and after wandering from place to place - as far as Paris and even, some have said, to Oxford - he sett...