In your plan: Week 19, Wed, 24 Feb 2027.
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Overview
The Divine Comedy is a long poem by Dante Alighieri, written in the early 14th century, that describes a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Dante, writing as a pilgrim who has lost his way, meets the dead and learns how each soul's choices fixed its fate. Its Inferno matches punishments to sins in a moral map of the human heart. It is also a landmark in literature: written in Italian rather than Latin, it helped shape the Italian literary language.
Context
Dante (1265-1321) was a Florentine poet and politician who was exiled from Florence in 1302 after a factional struggle, and he never returned. The poem was written during that exile, drawing on classical poetry, medieval theology and contemporary politics. It is set in the Easter week of 1300 and is divided into three canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, of 100 cantos in all.
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Curator's notes
- Why it matters
- The punishment fits the sin; a moral map of the soul. Founded the Italian language.
- Use in training and coaching
- "Midway through life, lost in a dark wood": mid-career crisis
- Connects to
- Virgil; Aquinas; Milton; Eliot
- What to read
- Inferno Cantos 1–5, 26, 33–34
- Text (date)
- Dante, Divine Comedy (c. 1320)
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