Dante Books

The pages fall out as soon as you open the first volumn. Sell a child and spring for the hardback editions.

Reading the Commedia in translation is always second-best to working through it in Italian; but unless you are a native speaker who also knows some Spanish and Latin, it can be tough going. That is where the three Singleton companion volumes are worth their weight in gold. They contain a canto-by-canto analysis of the multiplicity of allusions and references to all things political, philosophical and theological that make the depth of the work virtually unparalled in Western Lit.
While the Commedia isn't for everyone, the Singleton glosses are for anyone who wants to read and understand Dante on his terms. Combine these three volumes with the Grandgent Italian text, e non c'e bisogna d'altre cose per incontrar la via diritta ed esso che move il sole e l'altre stelle.

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.

This is the best book that i have found to prepare myself for the dantes exam. This book was much better than any of the other study guides that I found. I was really glad that I found this. I totally blew away the CLEP exam. I was sure lad that i had found this book..

This study guide was useless for the exam. The study guide has about 70% basic programming that is not on the test. I advise using the suggested study books on the DANTES fact sheet.

I am very fluent with computer programming and before I took the Dante Exam, I wanted to make sure that I was preapred. After reading this book, I found out many things that I did not know and that were on the test. I was so relieved after taking the test that I had read this book.

The book was very put together and made easy to understand. I was a bit overwhelemd when i was told all the resouces that I would have to find to study. I laughed after I found this book, passed the test and said "All you need is the Study guide and you will Fine". Get this book if you want to definitly pass.

This book is a waste of money It is irrelevant to the issue at hand which is SCANNO of course.

This wonderful little book contains some very interesting stories that would be of interest to the third/fourth generation Italian-Americans, Italian-Canadians or Italian-Australians. It provides brief insights to life in the Abruzzo. Naturally, some of the stories are better than others. For those Abruzzese-Americans, Abruzzese-Canadians or Abruzzese-Australians who do not read Italian and who want to understand a small part of their roots it is recommended reading and the price is reasonable.

I found this book amazingly involving. The stories made me feel at home. My roots are in Abruzzo, and everithing for me starts from there.

I am enjoying this study guide. The book came to me in great new shape. I am very pleased with my purchase.

I got this book from the library; used one source of recommended reading material from the official DANTES website, specifically the text called "Understanding Business" by Nickels and McHugh (great book; it's all you need.) I took 3 weeks to study; took the test today and scored a 64 (takes a 46 to pass.) LOTS of extraneous info in the DANTES study guide--you'll never see most of it on the test (I saw maybe 15%) but it gets the mind primed in the right direction. The Understanding Business text was perfect though. Read the summary's at the end of each chapter in the business text; take 6 to 10 tests in the DANTES study guide and go pass the test (you will.)

Esolen is neither a Dante scholar nor an Italian language/literature specialist. He is an English Teacher at Providence College, a Catholic institution. His retelling of the Divine Comedy is reasonably accurate and quite readable. The problem comes with his notes. They range from the scandalously inadequate to the downright offensive. Esolen has written a number of anti-gay articles for religious publications . This is reflected in his notes where he refers to homosexuality as something like "that most heinous of sins". This is not only offensive in a contemporary publication, but is totally out of tune with Dante himself, who took a much more sympathetic and nuanced approach c.1300 AD. And there are other personal and inappropriate comments.

There are many superior translations out there. Mandelbaum's is excellent and has very good notes. Robert and Jean Hollander's is also very fine and the notes are the most extensive and scholarly of all.

Not only is Esolen's translation superb, but his introductory comments and notes are invaluably penetrating. (Disclosure: my Italian allows me to understand only about 30-35% of this book as originally written, so I'm largely relying on others' glowing assessments of Esolen's translation quality.) Do yourself a favor and buy all three volumes (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso) of Esolen's translation, if only for his excellent introductory comments and notes.

"To read Dante is a duty;
To read him again is a need;
To relish him a sign of greatness."

-N. Tommaseo

I was sorely disappointed in this book. After I read the introduction, in which Panter describes what the book is about, I almost threw it across the room.

Jimbo takes the place of Dante, author of The Divine Comedy, the robot Valise takes the place of Virgil, and all the other characters represent/symbolize characters out of The Divine Comedy. They are all traversing Mount Purgatory, which is a "...vast infotainment testing center...and all the participants strive for University degrees in literature. Each must respond with a literary fragment, a quotation, that demonstrates a knowledge of the passage and an ability to quote other works alluding to the theme of that location in the poem, and in addition, to designate, by that utterance, the story of Boccaccio's Decameron that is allied to Dante's canto and to allude to the metaphorical sum and difference of the pairing of that allusion."

If this raises you're blood pressure, you might enjoy this book. Personally, I find it pretentious. But I persevered and began reading it. Here's a sample quote from Valise, representative of all of the characters, "I have shown him guilty gloom-rockers of focky bocky enhumed in wrath and havoc." I admit, I'm taking the quote out of all context, but after four pages of this kind of dialogue, I couldn't continue. The artwork and layout of the panels is detailed and striking, perfectly produced for this over-sized book, yet the awkwardness and disproportion of the characters is jarring. And everything you can think of is referenced, from the Bible and Chaucer to Kato, Elvis, and Boy George, all acknowledged below the panels.

But what turned me off the most is the lack of feeling. This is purely an intellectual exercise. If you like that kind of thing, this might be the Holy Grail, but if you're looking to get emotionally involved in a story with realistic characters, look elsewhere.

Weeewh! I'll not use too many words to say that this book is simply amazing... so clever, so rich, so well-done, so brainy, so quirky... and full of many literary and pop references (from Milton to Tiny Tim, from Godzilla to Chaucer, from "Westworld" to Frank Zappa... and much much more). Also Beautiful packaged and with a classy gilded cover! Great work Mr. Panter, you're always one of the coolest guys around... great work man!
Buy it or die (and eventually go to the real Purgatory)!!!

If you're a budding scholar in Pre-Raphaelitism, I would avoid this book. If you've already done some research on the life of Elizabeth Siddal, this book is an interesting read. This book doesn't follow the traditional layout of a biography, starting with birth and ending with death, but acts as a historiography: a study of what has been written about the subject. Jan Marsh looks at several biographies about Lizzie, considers the sources, the scholarly intent, and the history at the time, and considers if the biography is reliable or not. For instance, Violet Hunt's popular book on Lizzie is full of inconsistancies and has been tainted by the author's own image of who Lizzie really was.

In short, this book is worth buying, only if you have another good book on Lizzie. I recommend The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood, also by Jan Marsh, which is a valuable reference source.

Pat Marsh makes an admirable attempt at dispelling the myths about Dante Gabriel Rossetti's legendary wife. By examining different accounts of Siddal and comparing them to what we know is the truth, she attempts to create a kind of biography. That being said, I'm not convinced that there is enough material to warrant a whole book. Most of what we know about Siddal is a mystery. The book unfortunately reads like another book about the Pre-Raphaelite art movement. Nevertheless, if you're interested in the Pre-Raphaelites, this is worth reading.

Written in a breezy, sarcastic tone, this adult cartoon book provides a solid introduction to an ancient and easily misunderstood civilization. Cavo summarizes and simplifies modern intrepretations of Mayan historical eras, major deities, and many surprising scientific achievements. Yet Cavo doesn't shy away from the less romantic aspects of Mayan cultures like a frequent civil wars, a rigid class structure and human sacrifice that so many New Age narrators overlook in their celebration of this "spiritual" culture.

While some adults find hesistate to pick up a 109-page comic book, this casual approach helped clarify several aspects that more academic books had only deepen by specialized jargon and excessive detail. Readers should know that the text, originally written in Spanish from a cynical point of view, contains many spelling errors that are easier to overlook when dealing so many new words from Mayan culture.

Tourists to Mayan ruins, struggling students, and archaelogy buffs should find this accessible work a helpful and satsifying guide. If I were teaching a class that included a section on Mayan civilizations for middle school, high school or even college, I would assign this book as a satisfying introduction to a confusing subject.

I had climbed the pyramids at several Mayan ruin sites in Guatemala and Mexico before reading this book, and I still learned something.

You can learn a lot from tour leaders and personal guides, but often it's too much information too fast to have a really good sense of the historical context. This book provides, in cartoon form, a basic background on the history of the mysterious Maya, and would be good to read either before or after a visit to Mayan ruins.

The book was originally written in Spanish, and the translation is not great--plenty of spelling and grammatical errors. The "humor" doesn't translate that well, either--whether it was funny in the original Spanish, I cannot say.

Still, it's not bad as a place to start, to get a decent amount of information in a very short, easy-to-read format.

I recently discovered this gem of a Picoult book and I'm surprised at some of the negative reviews I see written by others. I found this novel refreshing in it's combination of the written story and the parallel graphic novel elements. After I read the book, I actually went back and studied the graphic parts as there's so much happening in them. I won't give away the plot, but Picoult writes about contemporary issues facing many families today, especially those with teens. I found this was very interesting and each part made me want to read more. I loved the incorporation of Dante's Circles of Hell, so that intrigued me as well. I can see where some might find parts over the top, or unbelievable, but I wasn't looking for a documentary. I think this argument could be said about any of Picoult's books. I wanted an entertaining story that made me think and this one did exactly that. I'm still discussing this one with others that have read it. Since I have a teenager at home, this book also opened up some serious discusssions with my daughter. I don't know what higher compliment I can give the book than that.

SPOILER ALERT

There's a lot of problems with this book. The biggest one, to me, is that puts the credibility of any woman who says that they've been raped into question. I can't imagine reading this book as a real rape victim, and thinking that I should have sympathy for the main character, 14 year old Trixie.

It's nearly impossible to care about Trixie after you find out what she did-- from lying to her parents about being a virgin before the incident after having sex dozens of times, from actually BUYING the ketamine (which was found in her system and sealed the case against the ex-boyfriend Jason), to never actually saying "No" when having sex with Jason. One thing that we all need to understand is that we can't expect anyone, boyfriends, partners, husbands, teachers, to be mind-readers. To other females out there-- if you don't want to do something, from kissing to having sex to doing the dishes, you need to SAY IT.

To me, Trixie was trying to take what was a bad emotional/sexual experience (realizing that the man she loved didn't love her, having painful sex) and turning it into a crisis. Instead of examining her choices, and thinking to herself, "well, that was awful, I'll never do that again--[fill in the blank-- let someone use me, equate sex with love, get trashed and come onto a guy without really thinking if I want to be physical with him, buy drugs] she construes the one incident as ruining her, believes that she is tarnished, that her world is now divided into "before rape" and "after rape."

This girl needed to read some Camille Paglia, get over herself, realize she did a dumb thing and she would never do it again, and not think that a terrible night where some bad things happened should define her life from that moment on.

Two things that really bothered me were that 1. Trixie didn't tell anyone that she had bought the ketamine, and was going to let the ex-boyfriend take the fall (and get tried as an adult). What cowardice. 2. That she didn't tell the police (or at least her PARENTS) what really happened-- that she never once said no to sex that night with Jason, and she couldn't even show physically that she didn't want to have sex because of the ketamine (which, again, SHE BOUGHT). Basically, she was going to allow someone else to go to jail to save her own reputation. Sorry, sister, that doesn't fly. All women were 14 years old once, but I doubt many of us would be that selfish.

On a good note, I thought the father Daniel Stone was a well-developed, interesting character and I loved the sequences in the Alaskan bush. Picoult is obviously a good writer. Too bad the main female character in this was such a drag.

I enjoyed this only because Picoult wrote it and I like her writing style. Other than that, it's just a book...another story. I didn't find her normal "shock" like her other books...and I really waited for it! She has wrote other wonderful books, I suppose they all can't be "amazing." But if your new to Picoult, she offers many other great page turners...just not this one.

Readers who are familiar with Dante's Inferno, will appreciate the rich symbolism and allegory here, but that background knowledge is not necessary to enjoy the story.

Trixie Stone is 14-year-old high school freshman who is devastated when her hocky player boyfriend, Jason, breaks up with her. To get him back, she decides to try to make him jealous by flirting with other guys at a party. She gets drunk and plays some gross party games that I hope my students aren't stupid enough to play. She ends up accusing Jason of raping her, which he denies.

Trixie's parents have to deal not only with her trauma and their guilt at not being able to protect her, but also with the fallout from their own transgressions. Her mother, a college professor, has an affair with a student and her father is forced to come to terms with his unhappy and self-destructive childhood.

This is not one of my favorite Picoult novels, although it did have a great deal of promise. If the novel had focused more on Trixie and her situation and less on her parents, I would have found it much more powerful. There is much to think about and discuss here.

I read the back of this book and thought, "sounds interesting" but eh...
It was good in parts a bit overdramatic and other parts just lagged. I finished reading it in time for the movie on Lifetime and I was even more disappointed. The book is better than the movie but still... eh.

This is the first (and last)Tosches to which I willing will subject myself.
To list the factual errors the book contains would require another book longer than the original.Remarkably, the author demonstrates repeatedly that he is ignorant in any number of languages. His style is that of a teenager who imagines he or she is the first person to use the F-word in public ( poor Lenny Bruce could have avoided jail fifty years ago had he had the prescience to anticipate N.T.).The author's perverse interpretations of Judaic concepts and history are unfortunate ; his poorly disguised antisemitism deplorable ; his use of ethnic slurs disgusting.
A puerile, silly stew of nonsense posing as-- what ?? Stew, spew-a pitiful mess in any event.

I don't read many novels, even if they are a bit historical, but this is one of my favorite books. Tosches is an excellent writer and easy read. I read Dante and then proceeded to read many of Nick's other works. But alas, he hasn't written many novels, and this is his best, so I was only disappointed. The chapters go back and forth between the present day mafia fight over Dante's original manuscript and the time when Dante was actually writing it. It's a little lewd at times, so definitely not for the faint of heart. Pick this up and you won't be able to put it down until finished.

On a side note, Tosches claims he was educated in a bar. This is one smart, intellectual dude, so I wouldn't be surprised that he skipped the status quo upbrining.

Nick Tosches has written a masterpiece of profane beauty unlike any other. Sex, history, violence, inspiration, poetry: all combined in the most potent vision of Tosches' brilliant literary quest. When there is a discussion of the greatest American writers (Mailer, Roth, Updike, etc) Tosches should be at the top of that list; no one writes with this power, intelligence and sheer mindblowing genius.

C'mon people Nick Tosches is one of the most real writers of our day. He does not care about these reviews, he writes for the demon inside. It is in all of us, he is the only one who is not afraid to let it out.

I read Nick Tosches' In the Hand of Dante a month or two ago, and I've been putting off this review ever since. Actually, I wasn't even sure I wanted to attempt a review because my opinions of the novel are rather ambivalent and, frankly, I didn't get a whole lot out of the experience. This is the kind of book that makes me think I should like it more than I actually do. After all, it's literary and deep (sometimes) and brought to life by a true wordsmith. Honestly, though, I found myself floundering through many a section of the story, and I've already forgotten more than I ever knew about what I was reading.

On the one hand, you've got the author inserting himself into the story as the protagonist. Due to his association with some shady, underground, fairly despicable people, he ultimately gets his hands on a long-lost original copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy. This is where the action of the book can be found, replete with lots of adults-only language, a few doses of brutality, and the blood of a string of murder victims. Alongside this story, however, is Tosches' take on Dante's own journey - seeking to tap into something deep and eternal, I guess. As I said, I got very little at all out of this section of the book. It moves along at a glacial pace, sells out to pretentiousness early on, and made the simple turning of each page something of an internal struggle. It doesn't help that Tosches apparently sought to use every word in the dictionary at least once, resulting in literary speed bump after speed bump. I'm an intelligent, well-educated fellow, and I was constantly running up against words I could not define (and had I chosen to seek out the definition of each one, I would surely still be trying to finish this novel all these weeks later). Using "big words" is no sin, of course, especially if the author actually knows what those words mean, but in Tosches' case I got the strong impression that he was just trying to show the reader how darn smart he thinks he is. That doesn't make for a good impression among many readers, and it puts to ruin Tosches' otherwise impressive writing style.

Despite what I found to be a remarkably promising story idea, In the Hand of Dante just didn't do anything for me. The only memorable passage in the whole book is the one many other reviewers have mentioned: Tosches' no-holds-barred attack on the publishing industry. That made for pretty gripping reading, but everything else left me quite nonplussed. I can't for the life of me figure out how this became a national bestseller, as I doubt many casual readers will make it past the first 50 pages. Only the most serious and dedicated of readers will want to tackle this novel.