Dante Books

I just finished reading Dante and I felt like reading it all over again. The universe created by the author brings so much dimension that I could feel myself standing next to Italo Tarnapo, in his battles and visions, watching the story unfold in VIP seats. Dante has lots of fantasy, mithology, and the perfect amount of blood.

what can i say? this book is exquisite! having only had the pleasure of hurried, cursory perusals at the local uni library
(thank god they have a copy!), i fell in love immediately with the beautiful illustrations and lovely text. of course the author is italian!

worth every drachma, i'd venture to opine.
break out the lire for this singular book.

Daxius is a childhood fantasy for children of all ages. It begins in a jungle and ends in outer space with Daxius ruling a planet of his own people. Daxius is excellent Afro-American storytelling. I first read Daxius when I was a little girl, now, I am reading it to my own daughter.

I love the opening setup for the story, and it just gets better,LT Joe Dante at his best I got the hardback edition, and it would be great to see more books in this series.

This book includes a comprehensive analysis of Chilean environmental law as applicable to infrastructure projects. The book won an award by the Inter-American Bar Association in 2006.

Developmental Psychopathology, 2nd Edition, Three Volume Set edited by Dante Cicchetti, Donald J. Cohen (Wiley) (available individually: Volume 1: Developmental Psychopathology, Theory and Method; Volume 2: Developmental Psychopathology, Developmental Neuroscience; Volume 3: Developmental Psychopathology, Risk, Disorder, and Adaptation) contains in three volumes the most complete and current research on every aspect of developmental psychopathology. This seminal reference work features contributions from international expert researchers and clinicians who bring together an array of interdisciplinary work to ascertain how multiple levels of analysis may influence individual differences, the continuity or discontinuity of patterns and the pathways by which the same developmental outcomes may be achieved.
It has been over a decade since the first two volumes of Developmental Psychopathology were published. These volumes were extremely well received: They have been highly cited in the literature and they have served as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners alike. The expansion of the second edition of Developmental Psychopathology from two to three volumes speaks to the continued growth of the field, as well as to the ascendance of theory and research in the area of neuroscience informed by a developmental perspective.
The first edition has proven to be a venerable reference work, the second edition has been extended by one whole volume. Homage to the development of brain imaging technologies and interpretation which is currently revolutionizing how we think about the brain and mental illnesses. The various articles detailed below are in depth surveys of developmental psychopathology in its various guises. The authors keep a well-balanced view between theoretical research and possible clinical applications so that students, clinicians and researchers will all find these essays representing the best consensual view of the field at this time. No doubt the price of these volumes will confine their use to the library more than to the classroom. Highly recommended for university libraries and research institutions.
There can he no doubt that the discipline of developmental psychopathology has grown significantly in a relatively short period of time. The more than 30 years that have elapsed since the initiation of the schizophrenia high-risk projects have been marked by significant contributions to the field. Noteworthy among these are the publication of Achenbach's (1974) first text, Rutter and Garmezy's (1983) chapter in the Handbook of Child Psychology, and the continued growth of the journal Development and Psycho-pathology, including the Millennium Special Issue entitled Reflecting on the Past and Planning for the Future of Developmental Psychopathology (Cicchetti & Sroufe, 2000). A not insignificant contributor to this rapid growth can he found in the very definitional parameters of the discipline. Theorists and researchers in the field of developmental psychopathology use a lifespan framework to elucidate the many factors that can contribute to the development of mental disorders in individuals at high risk, as well as those operative in individuals who have already manifested psychological disturbances or who have averted such disorders despite their high risk status. In essence, a developmental psychopathology perspective provides a broad, integrative framework within which the contributions of diverse disciplines can be incorporated and enhanced (Cicchetti & Sroufe, 2000). Thus, rather than having to develop new theories and methods, thoseworking within a developmental psychopathology frame-work can build on and extend previously established traditions. The ability to incorporate knowledge from diverse disciplines and to encourage interdisciplinary research will expedite growth within the field of developmental psychopathology.
As with the previous edition, the current volumes were not organized exclusively around thematic psychiatric disorders. Rather, authors were encouraged to explore developmentally relevant theories, methods of assessment, and domains of functioning. Although many chapters do ad-dress specific psychiatric disorders, it is the processes that contribute to the emergence of psychopathology that are emphasized rather than the psychiatric disorders per se.
Volume I, Theory and Method presents various approaches to understanding developmental influences on risk and maladaptation. As previously, the volume begins with an explication of the discipline of developmental psychopathology. Within this chapter, a number of significant advances within the field are noted, including the in-creased attention to processes and mechanisms, the use of multiple levels of analysis, the rise of developmental neuroscience, and the evolution of translational research paradigms. Chapters address a range of topics, including approaches to diagnoses of disorders, developmental epidemiology, diverse theoretical perspectives, various con-textual issues, and new frontiers in statistical techniques for developmental phenomena. The volume concludes with a chapter on prevention and intervention.
Volume I1, Developmental Neuroscience, was added to ac-knowledge the significant growth in this area since the publication of the first edition of this Handbook. Given the seminal historical role that neuroscience played in the emergence of developmental psychopathology (Cicchetti, 1990; Cicchetti & Posner, 2005), it is only fitting that developmental neuroscience has both informed and been in-formed by developmental psychopathology theorizing.
Neural plasticity, brain imaging, behavioral and molecular genetics, stress and neurobiology, immunology, and environmental influences on brain development are covered in this volume.
Volume III, Risk, Disorder, and Adaptation presents various perspectives on contributors to disorder. For example, chapters address the role of social support, family processes, and early experience on adaptation and maladapation. Other chapters address specific disorders, including mental retardation, language disorders, autism, disorders of attention, obsessive-compulsive disorders, Tourette's syndrome, social anxiety, schizophrenia, anti-social disorders, substance abuse, and dissociative disorders. A number of chapters on resilience despite adversity also are included. The volume concludes with a chapter on stigma and mental illness.
All authors were asked to conclude their chapters with discussions of future research directions and needs. Thus, these volumes serve not only to highlight current knowledge in the field of developmental psychopathology, but also to suggest avenues to pursue for progress to continue. In particular, it is increasingly important to incorporate multiple-levels-of-analysis approaches when investigating maladapation, psychopathology, and resilience (Cicchetti & Blender, 2004; Cicchetti & Dawson, 2002). The examination of multiple systems, domains, and ecological levels in the same individuals over developmental time will yield a more complete depiction of individual patterns of adaptation and maladapation. Moreover, such methods are likely to be extremely valuable in elucidating how interventions may affect brain-behavior relations. Such endeavors could result in significant progress toward under-standing psychopathology, highlighting efficacious interventions, and ultimately decreasing the burden of mental illness.
Volume 1: Developmental Psychopathology, Theory and Method
Contents Volume One:
Preface to Developmental Psychopathology, Second Edition by Dante Cicchetti Contributors List
1 DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Dante Cicchetti
2 WHAT'S IN A NAME? PROBLEMS VERSUS PROSPECTS IN CURRENT DIAGNOSTIC APPROACHES by Peter S. Jensen, Kimberly Hoagwood, and Lauren Zitner
3 DEVELOPMENTAL EPIDEMIOLOGY by E. Jane Costello and Adrian Angold
4 THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY IN FEMALES AND MALES by Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, Nicki R. Crick, Elizabeth A. Shirtcliff, and Kathleen E. Woods
5 DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES IN ASSESSMENT, TAXONOMY, AND DIAGNOSIS OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY: LIFE SPAN AND MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVES by Thomas M. Achenbach and Leslie A. Rescorla
6 COMPREHENSIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT: A
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY APPROACH FOR CLINICAL AND APPLIED RESEARCH by Alice S. Carter, Susan E. Marakovitz, and Sara S. Sparrow
7 DEVELOPMENTAL PATHWAYS by Andrew Pickles and Jonathan Hill
8 EMOTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Carroll E. Izard, Eric A. Youngstrom, Sarah E. Fine, Allison J. Mostow, and Christopher J. Trentacosta
9 JOINT ATTENTION, SOCIAL COMPETENCE, AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Peter Mundy and Marian Sigman
10 ATTACHMENT, STRESS, AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY: A DEVELOPMENTAL PATHWAYS MODEL by Roger Kobuk, Jude Cassidy, Karlen Lyons-Ruth, and Yair Ziv
11 SELF-PROCESSES AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Susan Harter
12 PEER RELATIONSHIPS, CHILD DEVELOPMENT, AND ADJUSTMENT: A DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY PERSPECTIVE by Jeffrey G. Parker, Kenneth H. Rubin, Stephen A. Erath, Julie C. Wojslawowicz, and Allison A. Buskirk
13 SCHOOLS, SCHOOLING, AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Robert C. Pianta
14 DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY FROM FAMILY SYSTEMS AND FAMILY RISK FACTORS PERSPECTIVES: IMPLICATIONS FOR FAMILY RESEARCH, PRACTICE, AND POLICY by
Philip A. Cowan and Carolyn Pape Cowan
15 CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILD PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Felicisima C. Serafica and Luis A. Vargas
16 UNDERSTANDING VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE FROM A NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE: IMPLICATIONS FOR RACIALLY AND ETHNICALLY DIVERSE YOUTH by Margaret Beale Spencer. Vinay Harpalani, Elaine Cassidy, Cleopatra Y. Jacobs, Sapana Donde, Tyhesha N. Goss. Michele Munoz-Miller, Nicole Charles, and Shaunqula Wilson
17 PROBABILISTIC EPIGENESIS OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Gilbert Gottlieb and Michael T. Willoughby
18 PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Peter Fonagy, Mary Target, and George Gergely
19 SOCIAL COGNITION, PSYCHOLOGICAL SYMPTOMS, AND MENTAL HEALTH: THE MODEL, EVIDENCE, AND CONTRIBUTION OF EGO DEVELOPMENT by Gil G. Noam, Copeland H. Young, and Janna Jilnina
20 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AUTONOMY AND AUTONOMY SUPPORT IN PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 795 Richard M. Ryan, Edward L. Deci, Wendy S. Grolnick, and Jennifer G. La Guardia
21 PERSON-ORIENTED RESEARCH STRATEGIES IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Lars R. Bergman, Alexander von Eye, and David Magnusson
22 A SURVEY OF DYNAMIC SYSTEMS METHODS FOR DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Isabela Granic and Tom Hollenstein
23 TAXOMETRIC METHODS: ENHANCING EARLY DETECTION AND PREVENTION OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY BY IDENTIFYING LATENT VULNERABILITY TRAITS by Theodore P. Beauchaine and Penny Marsh
24 A DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY APPROACH TO THE PREVENTION OF MENTAL HEALTH DISORDERS by Nicholas S. lalongo, Fred A. Rogosch, Dante Cicchetti, Sheree L. Toth, Jacquelyn Buckley, Hanno Petras, and Jenae Neiderhiser
Author Index Subject Index

Volume 2: Developmental Psychopathology, Developmental Neuroscience
Contents Volume Two
Preface to Developmental Psychopathology, Second Edition by Dante Cicchetti
Contributors
1 THE DEVELOPING BRAIN AND NEURAL PLASTICITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR NORMALITY, PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, AND RESILIENCE by Dante Cicchetti and W. John Curtis
2 COLLABORATIVE REGULATIONS OF VITALITY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD: STRESS IN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS AND POSTNATAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Colwyn Trevarthen, Kenneth J. Aitken, Marie Vandekerckhove, Jonathan Delafield-Butt, and Emese Nagy
3 ANATOMIC BRAIN IMAGING STUDIES OF NORMAL AND ABNORMAL BRAIN DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS by Jay N. Giedd, Philip Shaw, Greg Wallace, Nitin Gogtay, and Rhoshel K. Lenroot
4 TYPICAL AND ATYPICAL HUMAN FUNCTIONAL BRAIN DEVELOPMENT by Mark H. Johnson and Michelle de Haan
5 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX: THE MATURATION OF NEUROTRANSMITTER SYSTEMS AND THEIR INTERACTIONS by Francine M. Benes
6 EARLY NUTRITIONAL DEFICIENCIES IN BRAIN DEVELOPMENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Adam T. Schmidt and Michael K. Georgieff
7 I COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX: NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND VULNERABILITY TO PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Monica Luciana
8 NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Sally Ozonoff, Bruce F. Pennington, and Marjorie Solomon
9 PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL METHODS FOR THE STUDY OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Nathan A. Fox, Arnie Ashley Haile, and Koraly Perez-Edgar
10 BEHAVIORAL AND MOLECULAR GENETICS AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Richard Rende and Irwin Waldman
11 TEMPERAMENT, ATTENTION, AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Mary K. Rothbart and Michael 1. Posner
12 MOTIVATION, SELF-REGULATION, AND SELF-ORGANIZATION 502 Douglas Derryberry and Don M. Tucker
13 STRESS NEUROBIOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Megan R. Gunnar and Delia Vazquez
14 BEYOND THE STRESS CONCEPT: ALLOSTATIC LOAD-A DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE by Sonia J. Lupien, Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, Almut Hupbach, Mai T. Tu, Claudia Buss, Dominique Walker, Jens Pruessner, and Bruce S. McEwen
15 MEMORY AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Mark L. Howe, Sheree L. Toth, and Dante Cicchetti
16 TRAUMATIC STRESS FROM A MULTIPLE-LEVELS-OF-ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE by J. Douglas Bremner
17 IMMUNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Douglas A. Granger, Gale A. Granger, and Steve W. Granger
18 THE STUDY OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY IN
ADOLESCENCE: INTEGRATING AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE WITH THE STUDY OF CONTEXT by Laurence Steinberg, Ronald Dahl, Daniel Keating, David J. Kupfer, Ann S. Masten, and Daniel S. Pine
19 WHITE MATTER PATHOLOGY, BRAIN DEVELOPMENT, AND PSYCHIATRIC
DISORDERS: LESSONS FROM CORPUS CALLOSUM STUDIES by Vaibhav A. Diwadkar and Matcheri S. Keshavan
20 1 TOWARD A DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY DISTURBANCE: A NEUROBEHAVIORAL DIMENSIONAL MODEL by Richard A. Depue and Mark F. Lenzenweper
21 SYMPHONIC CAUSATION AND THE ORIGINS OF CHILDHOOD PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by W. Thomas Boyce

Author Index 819 Subject Index 863

Volume 3: Developmental Psychopathology, Risk, Disorder, and Adaptation
Contents Volume Three
Preface to Developmental Psychopathology, Second Edition by Dante Cicchetti
Contributors
1 SOCIAL SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Ross A. Thompson, Mary Fran Flood, and Rebecca Goodvin
2 THE MULTIPLE DETERMINANTS OF PARENTING by Jay Belsky and Sara R. Jaffee
3 INTERPARENTAL DISCORD, FAMILY PROCESS, AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Patrick T. Davies and E. Mark Cummings
4 AN ECOLOGICAL-TRANSACTIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON CHILD MALTREATMENT: FAILURE OF THE AVERAGE EXPECTABLE ENVIRONMENT AND ITS INFLUENCE ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT by Dante Cicchetti and Kristin Valentino
5 THE PERSISTING EFFECTS OF EARLY EXPERIENCES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT by Thomas C. O'Connor
6 DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACHES TO CHILDREN WITH MENTAL RETARDATION: A SECOND GENERATION? by Robert M. Hodapp and Jacob A. Burack
7 DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS OF LANGUAGE by Sabine Heim and April A. Benasich
8 AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS 317 Geraldine Dawson and Karen Toth
9 I DISORDERS OF ATTENTION AND IMPULSE REGULATION by Joel T. Nigg, Stephen P. Hinshaw, and Cynthia Huang-Pollock
10 ORIGINS OF OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER: DEVELOPMENTAL AND EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES by David W. Evans and James F. Leekman
11 TOURETTE'S SYNDROME: A MULTIFACTORIAL, DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY by Alexandra L. Spessot and Bradley S. Peterson
12 J SOCIAL ANXIETY AND EMOTION REGULATION: A MODEL FOR DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY PERSPECTIVES ON ANXIETY DISORDERS by Erin B. McClure and Daniel S. Pine
13 THE DEVELOPMENT AND ECOLOGY OF ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS by Thomas J. Dishion and Gerald R. Patterson
14 THE NEURODEVELOPMENTAL MODEL OF SCHIZOPHRENIA: UPDATED by Carrie E. Bearden, Stephanie E. Meyer. Rachel L. Loewy, Tara A. Niendam, and Tyrone D. Cannon
15 LIFE-COURSE-PERSISTENT VERSUS ADOLESCENCE-LIMITED ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR by Terrie E. Moffitt
16 DEVELOPMENTAL PATHWAYS TO SUBSTANCE ABUSE by Linda C. Mayes and Nancy E. Suchman
17 ALCOHOL USE AND THE ALCOHOL USE DISORDERS: A DEVELOPMENTAL BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL SYSTEMS FORMULATION COVERING THE LIFE COURSE by Robert A. Zucker
18 DISSOCIATIVE DISORDERS by Frank W. Putnam
19 COMPETENCE AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY IN DEVELOPMENT by Ann S. Masten. Keith B. Burt, and J. Douglas Coatsworth
20 RESILIENCE IN DEVELOPMENT: A SYNTHESIS OF RESEARCH ACROSS FIVE DECADES by Suniya S. Luthar
21 RESILIENCE IN LATER ADULTHOOD AND OLD AGE: RESOURCES AND POTENTIALS FOR SUCCESSFUL AGING by Werner Greve and Ursula M. Staudinger
22 STIGMA AND MENTAL ILLNESS: DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES AND FUTURE PROSPECTS byStephen P. Hinshaw

Author Index 883 Subject Index 931

Dante's estilo literario en La Divina Comedia es poetico y creativo. Leer esta obra es un placer que motiva la mente a poner al lector dentro de la obra de el Autor.

Dante's Literary style in La Divina Comedia is creative and poetic. It is a pleasure to read this work which transports the reader into the Authors work.

I don't know which edition this page refers to, but serious students of the Commedia need Grandgent's La Divina Commedia, the only complete Italian text with notes in English. Get the one revised by Singleton in 1972 (Harvard Univ. Press); the older editions have an outdated text. Pity the book is so long out of print. Took me three months to find mine, good luck finding yours.

This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
"The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand. Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante. Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity). This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature. Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical). The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Purgatorio
Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom, to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world (in Dante's time, it was believed that Hell existed underneath Jerusalem). The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere. At the shores of Purgatory, Dante and Virgil are attracted by a musical performance by Casella, but are reprimanded by Cato, a pagan who has been placed by God as the general guardian of the approach to the mountain. The text gives no indication whether or not Cato's soul is destined for heaven: his symbolic significance has been much debated. (Cantos I and II).

Dante starts the ascent on Mount Purgatory. On the lower slopes (designated as "ante-Purgatory" by commentators) Dante meets first a group of excommunicates, detained for a period thirty times as long as their period of contumacy. Ascending higher, he encounters those too lazy to repent until shortly before death, and those who suffered violent deaths (often due to leading extremely sinful lives). These souls will be admitted to Purgatory thanks to their genuine repentance, but must wait outside for an amount of time equal to their lives on earth (Cantos III through VI). Finally, Dante is shown a beautiful valley where he sees the lately-deceased monarchs of the great nations of Europe, and a number of other persons whose devotion to public and private duties hampered their faith (Cantos VII and VIII). From this valley Dante is carried (while asleep) up to the gates of Purgatory proper (Canto IX).

The gate of Purgatory is guarded by an angel who uses the point of his sword to draw the letter "P" (signifying peccatum, sin) seven times on Dante's forehead, abjuring him to "wash you those wounds within". The angel uses two keys, gold and silver, to open the gate and warns Dante not to look back, lest he should find himself outside the gate again, symbolizing Dante having to overcome and rise above the hell that he has just left and thusly leaving his sinning ways behind him. From there, Virgil guides the pilgrim Dante through the seven terraces of Purgatory. These correspond to the seven deadly sins, each terrace purging a particular sin in an appropriate manner. Those in purgatory can leave their circle whenever they like, but essentially there is an honors system where no one leaves until they have corrected the nature within themselves that caused them to commit that sin. Souls can only move upwards and never backwards, since the intent of Purgatory is for souls to ascend towards God in Heaven, and can ascend only during daylight hours, since the light of God is the only true guidance.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

These CDs were great- the price is very low compared with other audio books, and each Canto is summarized before being read, which is helpful if you're not already extremely familiar with the story. The reading was well executed and clear. I would recommend this to anyone who is familiar with it and wants to hear the work aloud or who has never read it before.