Michelangelo placed him in heaven in his“Last Judgment”; Sandro Botticelli re-created the circles of hell created by his poetic imagination; and Hieronymus Bosch, William Blake, and Gustave Doré imagined his infernal visions in brilliant works of art. Even today, when the theology and politics of late medieval Florence seem so remote, Dante Alighieri’s masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, still fascinates and inspires readers the world over.
Completed just before Dante died in 1321, it consists of three parts—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—The Divine Comedy is a long poem recounting the author’s journey among the damned in hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. Later, he is reunited with his beloved, Beatrice, who guides him up to purgatory, and then to Paradise, where, in a moment of ecstasy, Dante glimpses God.
In naming…