The Portable Dante

Introduction by Mark Musa

Translated by Mark Musa

Notes by Mark Musa

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The famed Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s two masterworks—The Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova—in one volume

A Penguin Classic

As a philosopher, he wedded classical methods of inquiry to a Christian faith. As an autobiographer, he looked unsparingly at his own failures to depict universal struggles. As a visionary, he dared draw maps of Hell, with Purgatory and Paradise, and populate all three realms with recognizable human beings. As a passionate lover, he became a poet of bereavement and renunication. As all of these, Dante Alighieri paved the way for modern literature, while creating verse and prose that remain unparalleled for formal elegance, intellectual depth, and emotional grandeur.

The Portable Dante captures the scope and fire of Dante’s genius as thoroughly as any…

$32.00

July 29, 2003

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Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italy’s greatest poet, was born in Florence and belonged to a noble but impoverished family. He first met Bice Portinari, whom he called Beatrice, in 1274; she inspired his most famous poetry, including the Vita Nuova, which he wrote to console himself when she died in 1290, and The Divine Comedy, which he began seventeen years after her death.