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Dante's Inferno |  | Author: Dante
Creator: Henry W. Longfellow
Publisher: Del Rey
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
Buy New: $7.75
as of 3/10/2010 20:24 PST details
You Save: $5.25 (40%)
Seller: allnewbooks
Rating:  12 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0345522230
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780345522238
Publication Date: January 19, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780345522238 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The timeless classic of a journey through the horrors of hell
The action adventure blockbuster that's rocking the video game world
All hell is breaking loose. Electronic Arts' thrilling video game Dante's Inferno has exploded on the scene and this book provides unique insight into its creation. Go back to the source with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's celebrated translation of Dante's epic poem. Presented here in its entirety, the poem provides the original foundation and inspiration for the game. Then learn the game's creators turned the Dante's notorious Nine Circles of Hell into the hottest game around.
In sixteen pages of stunning art, you'll discover how the monsters and characters—from King Minos and Cerberus to Lucifer himself—evolved from their classic images to the darkest creatures in damnation, and witness how the environments fashioned by the game's creators bring the tortured netherworld of absolute evil to hideous life. In addition, Executive Producer Jonathan Knight shares intriguing details about the process of adapting Dante's masterpiece into this epic videogame in a fascinating introduction written exclusively for this book.
Welcome to Hell—let the nightmares begin.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
 Go to Hell. March 6, 2010
Dante's Inferno is an epic poem written by one of the greatest poets ever. Dante goes through the nine circles of Hell just to save his true love. This is an amazing poem that many should enjoy.
The Inferno November 12, 2007
Arthur L. Wilborn Jr. (Miami, FL USA)
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I first read this book when I was in highschool and it's still one of my favorites books today.
 Inferno for the a new generation October 10, 2007
Jennifer Clarke (Southeast Texas)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
It is nice to have a more recent translation of a classic work. Often classical works are difficult to understand because even though in English, they are written in forms and modes that are "out of fashion" or not easily understandable to younger generations from lack of exposure. This version is easy to read and understand. The poetry is beautiful. I just think this project is exciting and it is so nice to see a compilation of work that includes so many contemporary poets.
Excellent Book July 3, 2007
Angela S. Schmitz (Jacksonville, NC, USA)
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
I found Dante's Inferno to be in excellent shape, a great book, and plan on purchasing volumes II and III.
Medieval vision of the afterlife April 30, 2007
Michael A Neulander (VA)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization. The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 cantos and three books is not just literary. Dante's autobiographical poem Commedia, as he titled it, was his look into the individual psyche and human soul. He explored and reflected on such fundamental questions as political institutions and their problems, the nature of humankind's moral actions, and the possibility of spiritual transformation; these were all fundamental social and cultural concerns for people during the fourteenth-century. Dante wrote the Commedia not in Latin but in the Tuscan dialect of Italian so that it would reach a broader readership. The Commedia was a three-part journey undertaken by the pilgrim Dante to the realms of the Christian afterlife: Hell, (Inferno), Purgatory, (Purgatorio), and Paradise, (Paradisio).
The poem narrated in first person, began with Dante lost midlife. He was 35 years old in the year 1300 and in a dark wood. Being lost in the dark wood was certainly an allegorical device that Dante used to express the condition of his own life at the time he started writing the poem. Dante had been active in Florentine politics and a member of the White Guelph party who opposed the secular rule of Pope Boniface VIII over Florence. In 1302, The Black Guelphs who were allied with the Pope, were militarily victorious in gaining control of the city and Dante found himself an exile from his beloved city for the rest of his life. Thus, Dante started writing the Commedia in 1308 and used it to comment on his own tribulations of life, and to state his views on politics and religion, and heap scorn on his political enemies.
Dante's first leg of his journey out of the dark wood was through the nine concentric circles of Hell (Inferno), escorted by his favorite classical Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid. Dante borrowed heavily from Virgil's Aeneid. Much of Dante's description of hell had similarities to Virgil's description in his sixth book of the Aeneid. Dante's three major divisions of sin in hell where unrepentant sinners dwelled, had their sources in Aristotle and Augustinian philosophy. They were self-indulgence, violence, and fraud. Fraud was considered the worst of moral failures because it undermined family, trust, and religion; in essence, it tore at the moral fabric of civilized society. These divisions were inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom. The fourth classical virtue, justice, is what Dante came to believe after his journey through hell that all its inhabitants received for their unrepentant sins. There were nine concentric circles of hell inside the earth; each smaller than the previous one. For Dante the geography of hell was a moral geography as well as a physical one, reflecting the nature of the sin. Canto IV describes the first circle of hell, Limbo, which is where Dante met the shades, as souls where called, of the virtuous un-baptized such as Homer, Ovid, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato.
In the four circles for the sin of self-indulgence Dante met shades who where lustful, gluttons, hoarders and wrathful. In the second circle of Hell, lustful souls were blown around in a violent storm. In Canto V, one of the great dramatic moments of the poem, Dante had his first lengthy encounter with an unrepentant sinner Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with her brother-in-law. Like all the sinners in hell, Francesca laid the blame for her sin elsewhere. She claimed to be seduced into committing adultery after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. At the end of the scene, Dante fainted out of pity for Francesca.
In Canto X, the sixth circle of hell reserved for heretics who are punished by being trapped in flaming tombs, Dante took the opportunity to use the circle to chastise political leaders for participating in political partisanship. A Florentine who was a leader in the rival Ghibbelline political party, Farinata degli Uberti, accosted Dante. Both men aggressively argued with each other, recreating in hell the bitterness of partisan politics in Florence. Farinata predicted Dante's exile. Dante used this Canto to show the dangerous tendencies of petty political partisanship that he harbored.
The seventh circle of hell was subdivided into three areas where sinners were punished for doing violence against themselves, their neighbors, or God. In Canto XIII Dante encountered Pier della Vigne in the wood of the suicides. The shades there were shrubs who had to speak through a broken branch. Pier spoke to Dante about how he had been an important advisor to Emperor Frederick II, and how he blamed his fall, and his suicide, on the envy of other court members. This Canto was especially important because Dante came to grips with his own "future" fall from political power and exile. Pier's behavior served as a strong example to Dante how not to act in exile. Whether he had been tempted to commit suicide is not clear; however, he certainly had been prone to the selfish and despairing attitude that Pier represented.
The last two circles of hell contained the sinners of fraud. In the eighth circle, there were ten ditches for the various types of fraud such as Simony, thievery, hypocrisy, etc. Canto XIX described the third ditch, which contained those guilty of Simony, the sin of church leaders perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church offices. Simonists were buried upside down in a rock with their feet on fire. Pope Nicholas III mistakenly addressed Dante as Pope Boniface VIII who was the current Pope in 1300, and whose place in hell was thereby predicted. This is not surprising since Boniface was the person most responsible for Dante's exile. In an interesting literary twist, Nicholas "confessed" to Dante, as if he was a priest, his sin of greed and nepotism. He admitted that even after becoming Pope he cared more for his family's interests than the good of the whole Church. Dante responded to Nicholas' "confession" with a stinging condemnation of Simony drawn from the Book of Revelation. After this encounter, Dante came to understand that hell was a place of justice.
Canto XXXIV, the last one in the Inferno, depicted Satan with three heads. Each head was chewing the three worst sinners of humankind. The middle head was chewing on the head of Judas Iscariot, who was a disciple to Jesus and his betrayer. The other two heads were chewing Brutus and Cassius; the murderers of Julius Caesar, and the two men Dante faulted for the destruction of a unified Italy. Dante considered the two ultimate betrayals against God and against the empire as the worst betrayals perpetrated in the history of humankind.
Thus, Dante's intent in his Commedia was to teach fourteenth-century readers that if one wanted to ascend spiritually towards God then one needed to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant. By doing this, one could learn to overcome the same tendencies found in themselves. He wanted people to realize what he had come to learn that political partisanship would only stand in the way of unifying Italy and keep it from regaining any of its former glory that it enjoyed during the time of the Roman Empire.
Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
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