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Divine Comedy
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The Divine Comedy is ... important for its place in the history of the development of the Italian language. Dante opposed the assumptions of his day that prescribed Latin as the only appropriate language for serious writing. He advocated the use of a courtly Italian enriched with the best of every spoken dialect to form a serious literary language. This would help to unify the separated Italian territories by the creation of a national culture, an end to which Dante strived his entire life. While falling short of his goal of unification, Dante did use his native Tuscan as a basis for several of his works, including The Divine Comedy. The impact of his work upon the culture of the Italian peninsula helped to establish his Tuscan dialect as the ancestor of modern Italian.
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The "Divine Comedy" is divided into three canticas (cantiche) that correspond to the three realms of the afterlife used as physical divisions in the story line: Inferno (Hell), Pulgatorio (Purgatory), Paradiso (Paradise). Each cantica consists of thirty three cantos except the Inferno that has thirty four making it a total of one hundred cantos.
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The Divine Comedy presents life as a journey in which one man (representing all human beings) must overcome obstacles to achieve the ultimate goal, eternal bliss in the sight of God. Therefore--unlike epics such as The Odyssey, The Aeneid, and Beowulf--The Divine Comedy focuses mainly on life as a spiritual journey. The obstacles the traveler must overcome are temptation and sin.
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The Divine Comedy is Neil Hannon. Over the years, the name has encompassed other musicians, but the driving force of the band and its main (sometimes only!) member has always been Neil Hannon. He chose the name ‘The Divine Comedy’ aged 18, almost at random…
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The German edition of The Divine Comedy was published by Les Heures Claires and was limited to 1000 sets. Out of the 1000 sets only 386 or so were completed. Each print was matted in a paper sleeve. The prints bear watermarks, (two of every four) and the only difference between these woodcuts and the regular French edition is the addition of a block signature. Each print, with the exception of Enferno 1 and Purgatory 9, which already bear a plate signature have an added block signature in the image area. It is not clear whether this edition is in addition to or part of the 5346 mentioned above.
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The following canto-by-canto outline of The Divine Comedy accompanies the Charles Eliot Norton translation of epic, which is in the public domain and is available at Project Gutenberg. Click here to access the complete text.
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Divine Comedy