Books: The towering Inferno

Dante remains the cornerstone of good Western literature | George Grant

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was born and raised in the vibrant pre-Renaissance environment of Medieval Florence. His family was descended from minor nobility, and he was able to maintain a solidly bourgeois status throughout his life. His promising public career came to an end in 1301. He fell out of favor when the political climate in the city changed dramatically, and he was eventually banished.

But what was by all appearances a tragic turn of events for Dante proved to be a propitious and beneficent gift to posterity. It was while he was wandering from one inhospitable exile to another that he completed his masterful poetic trilogy, The Divine Comedy.

The work is a kind of spiritual autobiography, mapping the subterranean ecology of his soul. It is an epic allegorical description of a journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and finally Heaven (Paradiso). Utilizing soaring images, complex rhyming schemes, brisk plotting, compelling characterizations, and gripping contemporary illustrations, he both created a new vision for vernacular poetry and a new perspective of human psychology. The result is nothing short of stunning.