INFERNO: THE DIVINE COMEDY I

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265. Considered Italys greatest poet this scion of a Florentine family mastered in the art of lyric poetry at an early age. His first major work is La Vita Nuova (1292) which is a tribute to Beatrice Portinari the great love of his life. Married to Gemma Donatic Dantes political activism resulted in his being exiled from Florence to eventually settle in Ravenna. It is believed that The Divine Comedycomprised of three canticles The Inferno The Purgatorio and The Paradisowas written between 1308 and 1320. Dante Alighieri died in 1321.Part of Penguins beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series designed by the awardwinning Coralie BickfordSmith these delectable and collectible editions are bound in highquality colourful tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Describing Dantes descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas the liar Odysseus the suicide Cleopatra and his own political enemies damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all. For it is only by encountering Satan in the heart of Hell that he can truly understand the tragedy of sin.[Coralie BickfordSmiths] recent work for Penguin Classics is...nothing short of glorious