The Divine Comedy

Friday, 23 November 2012

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Dante Park
Dante Park or Dante Square is a park in front of Lincoln Center in New York City, New York.
The park was established by Italian-Americans in honor of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Carlo Barsotti, editor of the paper Il Progresso Italo-Americano, originally wanted to gather funds for a much more substantial statue to be placed in Times Square around 1912. Because of fundraising difficulties, by 1921, the 600th anniversary of Dante's death, a smaller statue was completed by Ettore Ximenes and placed in the location at Broadway at West 64th Street.
A statue of the same casting is featured at Meridian Hill Park in Washington, DC.
Coordinates: 40°46′19″N 73°58′57″W / 40.77194°N 73.9825°W / 40.77194; -73.9825

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Florence
Florence (Italian: Firenze [fiˈrɛntse] ( listen), alternate obsolete form: Fiorenza; Latin: Florentia) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area.
Florence is famous for its history. A centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time, Florence is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1870 the city was also the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy.
The historic centre of Florence attracts millions of tourists each year, and Euromonitor International ranked the city as the world's 72nd most visited in 2009, with 1,685,000 visitors. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the city is noted for its history, culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments. The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace, amongst others, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics.

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Foligno
Foligno is an ancient town of Italy in the province of Perugia in east central Umbria, on the Topino river where it leaves the Apennines and enters the wide plain of the Clitunno river system. It is located 40 km (25 mi) south-east of Perugia, 10 km (6 mi) north-north-west of Trevi and 6 km (4 mi) south of Spello.
Foligno railway station forms part of the main line from Rome to Ancona, and is the junction for Perugia; it is thus an important rail center, with repair and maintenance yards for the trains of central Italy, and was therefore subjected to severe Allied aerial bombing in World War II, responsible for its relatively modern aspect, although it retains some medieval monuments. Of its Roman past no significant trace remains, with the exception of the regular street plan of the centre. Other resources include sugar refineries and metallurgical, textile, building materials and paper and timber industries. After the war, the city's position in the plain and again its rail connections have led to a considerable suburban spread with the attendant problems of traffic and air pollution, as well as a severe encroachment on the Umbrian wetlands. Foligno is on an important interchange road junction in central Italy and 2 km far from the centre of the city there is the Foligno Airport.

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Gubbio
Gubbio is a town and comune in the far northeastern part of the Italian province of Perugia (Umbria). It is located on the lowest slope of Mt. Ingino, a small mountain of the Apennines. See also Mount Ingino Christmas Tree.
The city's origins are very ancient. The hills above the town were already occupied in the Bronze Age (Malone and Stoddart 1994). As Ikuvium, it was an important town of the ancient Umbrian people in pre-Roman times, made famous for the discovery there of the Eugubine (or Iguvine) Tables, a set of bronze tablets that together constitute the largest surviving text in ancient Umbrian. After the Roman conquest in the 2nd century BC — it kept its name as Iguvium — the city remained important, as attested by its Roman theater, the second-largest surviving in the world.
Gubbio became very powerful in the beginning of the Middle Ages. The town sent 1000 knights to fight in the First Crusade under the lead of count Girolamo Gabrielli, and according to an undocumented local tradition, they were the first to penetrate into the Holy Sepulchre when the city was seized (1099).

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Jerusalem
Jerusalem ( /dʒəˈruːsələm/; Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם‎‎ Yerushaláyim ; Arabic: القُدس‎ al-Quds and/or أورشليم Ûrshalîm) is the capital of Israel, though not internationally recognized as such, and one of the oldest cities in the world. It is located in the Judean Mountains, between the Mediterranean Sea and the northern edge of the Dead Sea. If the area and population of East Jerusalem is included, it is Israel's largest city in both population and area, with a population of 801,000 residents over an area of 125.1 km² (48.3 sq mi). Jerusalem is also a holy city to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The oldest part of the city was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond its boundaries.

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Southern hemisphere
Coordinates: 45°0′0″S 0°0′0″E / 45°S 0°E / -45; 0
The Southern Hemisphere is the part of Earth that lies south of the equator. The word hemisphere (from the Greek word σφαιρα (sphere) +ημι (half)) literally means 'half ball' or "half sphere". It is also that half of the celestial sphere south of the celestial equator.
The Southern Hemisphere contains all or parts of four continents (Antarctica, Australia, most parts of South America and southern half of Africa), four oceans (South Atlantic, Indian, South Pacific, and Southern) and most of Oceania. Several islands off the Asian continental mainland are also in the Southern Hemisphere. Due to the tilt of Earth's rotation relative to the Sun and the ecliptic plane, summer is December to March and winter is June to September. September 22 or 23 is the vernal equinox and March 20 or 21 is the autumnal equinox.

Climates in the Southern Hemisphere overall tend to be slightly milder than those in the Northern Hemisphere at similar latitudes except in the Antarctic which is colder than the Arctic. This is because the Southern Hemisphere has significantly more ocean and much less land. Water heats up and cools down more slowly than land.

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Agnolo Bronzino
Agnolo di Cosimo (November 17, 1503 – November 23, 1572), usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino (mistaken attempts also have been made in the past to assert his name was Agnolo Tori and even Angelo (Agnolo) Allori), was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence. His sobriquet, Bronzino, in all probability refers to his relatively dark skin.
Bronzino was born in Florence, the son of a butcher. According to his contemporary Vasari, Bronzino was a pupil first of Raffaellino del Garbo, and then of Pontormo, to whom he was apprenticed at 14. Pontormo is thought to have introduced a portrait of Bronzino as a child (seated on a step) into one of his series on Joseph in Egypt now in the National Gallery, London. Pontormo exercised a dominant influence on Bronzino's developing style, and the two were to remain collaborators for most of the former's life. An early example of Bronzino's hand has often been detected in the Capponi Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita by the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Pontormo designed the interior and executed the altarpiece, the masterly Deposition from the Cross and the sidewall fresco Annunciation. Bronzino apparently was assigned the frescoes on the dome, which however have not survived. Of the four empanelled tondi or roundels depicting each of the evangelists, two were said by Vasari to have been painted by Bronzino. His style however is so similar to his master's that scholars still debate the specific attributions.

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Alfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X (23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284), called the Wise (Spanish: el Sabio), was the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 30 May 1252 until his death. During the Imperial election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be King of the Romans (that is, of Germany and Italy) on 1 April. He renounced his imperial claim in 1275, and in creating an alliance with England in 1254 his claim on Gascony also.
Alfonso established Castilian as a language of higher learning, and was a prolific author of Galician poetry, such as the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which are equally notable for their musical notation as for their literary merit. Alfonso's scientific interests—he is sometimes nicknamed "the Astrologer" (el Astrólogo)—led him to sponsor the creation of the Alfonsine tables, and the Alphonsus crater on the moon is named after him. As a legislator he introduced the first vernacular law code in Spain, the Siete Partidas. He created the Mesta, an association of sheep farmers in the central plain, but debased the coinage to finance his claim to the German crown. He fought a successful war with Portugal, but a less successful one with Granada. The end of his reign was marred by a civil war with his eldest surviving son, the future Sancho IV, which would continue after his death.

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Anthony M. Esolen
Anthony M. Esolen is a professor of English at Providence College and noted translator of classic works, as well as a popular writer for magazines like the Claremont Review and Touchstone, of which he is a senior editor. He has translated Dante's Divine Comedy, Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, and Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. He also writes a column for the Inside Catholic website.
Esolen graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1981. He pursued graduate work from the University of North Carolina, receiving his M.A. in 1981 and his Ph.D. in 1987. His dissertation was titled "A Rhetoric of Spenserian Irony" and was directed by S.K. Heninger.
He taught at the University of North Carolina from 1985 to 1988 and then at Furman University from 1988 to 1990. He began teaching at Providence College in 1990, becoming a full professor in 1995.
Along with teaching, Esolen publishes articles and books on a regular basis, as well as accepting media interviews. Publications frequently appear in The Catholic World Report, Touchstone Magazine. He also serves as an editor with Touchstone Magazine.

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Antoine de Rivarol
Antoine de Rivarol (26 June 1753–11 April 1801) was a Royalist French writer during the Revolutionary era.
Rivarol was born in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, Gard. It appears that his father, an innkeeper, was a cultivated man. The son assumed the title of comte de Rivarol, asserting a connection with a noble Italian family, but his enemies said his name was really Riverot and that he was not of a noble family. After various vicissitudes, he went to Paris in 1777 and won some academic prizes. In 1784, his treatise Sur l'universalité de la langue française and his translation of Dante's Inferno were favourably noted. The year before the French Revolution broke out, he and a certain Champcenetz published a lampoon, titled Petit Almanach de nos grands hommes pour 1788, that ridiculed without pity a number of writers of proven or future talent, along with a great many nobodies.
Rivarol was the foremost journalist, commentator and epigrammatist among that faction of aristocrats which was most uncompromisingly reactionary: he heaped scorn upon republicanism and virulently defended the ancien regime.

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Aristotle
Aristotle (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics.
Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"), it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.

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Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917), known as Auguste Rodin ( /oʊˈɡuːst roʊˈdæn/ oh-GOOST roh-DAN; French: [oɡyst ʁɔdɛ̃]), was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art.
Sculpturally, Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface in clay. Many of his most notable sculptures were roundly criticized during his lifetime. They clashed with the predominant figure sculpture tradition, in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory, modeled the human body with realism, and celebrated individual character and physicality. Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, but refused to change his style. Successive works brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.

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Averroes
ʾAbū l-Walīd Muḥammad bin ʾAḥmad bin Rušd (Arabic: أبو الوليد محمد بن احمد بن رشد‎), better known just as Ibn Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد‎), and in European literature as Averroes ( /əˈvɛroʊ.iːz/; April 14, 1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian Muslim polymath; a master of Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Maliki law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics and celestial mechanics. He was born in Córdoba, Al Andalus, modern-day Spain, and died in Marrakesh, Morocco. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism.
Ibn Rushd was a defender of Aristotelian philosophy against claims from the influential Islamic theologian Ghazali who attacked philosophy so it would not become an affront to the teachings of Islam.
Averroes' name is also seen as Averroës, Averroès or Averrhoës, indicating that the "o" and the "e" form separate syllables. Averroes is a Latinisation of a Hebrew transcription of the Arab name Ibn Rushd.

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Avicenna
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā (Persian پورسينا Pur Sina [ˈpuːr ˈsiːnɑː] "son of Sina"; c. 980, Afshana near Bukhara– 1037, Hamadan, Iran), commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 of his surviving treatises concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine.
His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia, and The Canon of Medicine, which was a standard medical text at many medieval universities. The Canon of Medicine was used as a text-book in the universities of Montpellier and Leuven as late as 1650. Ibn Sīnā's Canon of Medicine provides a complete system of medicine according to the principles of Galen (and Hippocrates).
His corpus also includes writing on philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics, as well as poetry. He is regarded as the most famous and influential polymath of the Islamic Golden Age.

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Barbara Reynolds
Barbara Reynolds (born 13 June 1914) is an English scholar, lexicographer and translator, wife of the philologist and translator Lewis Thorpe.
The daughter of Alfred Charles Reynolds, and the god-daughter of Dorothy L. Sayers, Reynolds was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and University College, London.
Reynolds was an assistant lecturer in Italian at the London School of Economics from 1937 to 1940. During the Second World War, she was an assistant lecturer (1940–1945) at the University of Cambridge, then University Lecturer in Italian Literature and Language from 1945 to 1962. She was Warden of Willoughby Hall, University of Nottingham, from 1963 to 1969 and Reader in Italian Studies at Nottingham from 1966 to 1978. Alongside her teaching work, she was chief executive and General Editor of the Cambridge Italian Dictionary from 1948 to 1981 and managing editor of Seven, an Anglo-American literary review, from 1980 to 2004.
Reynolds held the title of Honorary Reader in Italian at the University of Warwick from 1975 to 1980 and was Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, 1974–75, Wheaton College, Illinois, 1977–78, and 1982, Trinity College, Dublin, 1980 and 1981, and Hope College, Michigan, 1982. She is was chairman of the Dorothy L Sayers Society from 1986 to 1994 and president from 1995. Its officers in recent years have regularly programmed events for 13 June, the common birthday of Sayers and Reynolds.

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Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoˈvanni bokˈkattʃo]; 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular. Boccaccio is particularly notable for his dialogue, of which it has been said that it surpasses in verisimilitude that of virtually all of his contemporaries, since they were medieval writers and often followed formulaic models for character and plot.
The exact details of his birth are uncertain. The majority of sources state that he was born either in Florence or in a village near Certaldo where his family was from.Giovanni Villani, a contemporary of Boccaccio and chronicler, states that he was born in Paris as a consequence of an illicit relation but others denounce this as a romanticism by the earliest biographers. He was the son of a Florentine merchant and an unknown woman, and almost certainly born illegitimate.

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Bonaventure
Saint Bonaventure, O.F.M., (Italian: San Bonaventura; 1221 – 15 July 1274), born John of Fidanza (Italian: Giovanni di Fidanza), was an Italian medieval scholastic theologian and philosopher. The seventh Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, he was also a Cardinal Bishop of Albano. He was canonized on 14 April 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV and declared a Doctor of the Church in the year 1588 by Pope Sixtus V. He is known as the "Seraphic Doctor" (Latin: Doctor Seraphicus). Many writings believed in the Middle Ages to be his are now collected under the name Pseudo-Bonaventura.
He was born at Bagnoregio in Latium, not far from Viterbo. Almost nothing is known of his childhood, other than the names of his parents, Giovanni di Fidanza and Maria Ritella.
He entered the Franciscan Order in 1243 and studied at the University of Paris, possibly under Alexander of Hales, and certainly under Alexander's successor, John of Rochelle. In 1253 he held the Franciscan chair at Paris and was proceeded as Master of Theology. Unfortunately for Bonaventure, a dispute between seculars and mendicants delayed his reception as Master until 1257, where his degree was taken in company with Thomas Aquinas. Three years earlier his fame had earned him the position of lecturer on the The Four Books of Sentences—a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the twelfth century—and in 1255 he received the degree of master, the medieval equivalent of doctor.

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Brunetto Latini
Brunetto Latini (c. 1220–1294) (who signed his name Burnectus Latinus in Latin and Burnecto Latino in Italian) was an Italian philosopher, scholar and statesman.
Brunetto Latini was born in Florence in 1220 to a Tuscan noble family, the son of Buonaccorso Latini. He belonged to the Guelph party. He was a notary and a man of learning, much respected by his fellow citizens and famed for his skill as an orator. He expounded the writings of Cicero as guidance in public affairs.
He was of sufficient stature to be sent to Seville on an embassy to Alfonso el Sabio of Castile to seek help for Florence against the Sienese; the mission was unsuccessful. On his return from Spain, travelling along the Pass of Roncesvalles, he describes meeting a student from Bologna astride a bay mule, who told him of the defeat of the Guelphs at the Battle of Montaperti. As a result, Latini was exiled from his native city. He took refuge for some years (1260–1266) in France working as a notary - in Montpellier, Arras, Bar-sur-Aube and Paris.

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Burton Raffel
Burton Raffel (born 1928) is a translator, a poet and a teacher. He has translated many poems, including the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, poems by Horace, and Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. In 1964, Raffel recorded an album along with Robert P. Creed, on Folkways Records entitled Lyrics from the Old English. In 1996, he published his translation of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, which has been acclaimed for making Cervantes more accessible to the modern generation. In 2006, Yale University Press published his new translation of the Nibelungenlied.
Among his many edited and translated publications are Poems and Prose from the Old English, and Chrétien de Troyes' Cligès, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, Erec and Enide, and Yvain, the Knight of the Lion. Raffel is also a poet in his own right; over the years he has published numerous volumes of it; however, only one remains in print: Beethoven in Denver. Beethoven describes what happens when the dead composer visits Denver, Colorado in the late 1970s. Also set in Colorado was the Raffel-scripted film, The Legend of Alfred Packer, the first film version of the story of Alferd Packer. Burton Raffel was the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Arts and Humanities and emeritus professor of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette until 2003. Raffel worked with Yale Press and Harold Bloom on a series of 14 annotated Shakespeare plays. In 2008 the Modern Library published his new translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

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C. H. Sisson
Charles Hubert Sisson (also known as C. H. Sisson) CH (22 April 1914 – 5 September 2003) was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.
Born in Bristol in 1914, C. H. Sisson was noted as a poet, novelist, essayist and an important translator. He was a great friend of the critic and writer Donald Davie, with whom he corresponded regularly.
Sisson was a student at the University of Bristol where he read English and Philosophy. As a poet he first came to light through the London Arts Review, X, founded by the painter Patrick Swift and the poet David Wright. He reacted against the prevailing intellectual climate of the 1930s, particularly the Auden Group, preferring to go back to the anti-romantic T. E. Hulme, and to the Anglican tradition. The modernism of his poetry follows a 'distinct genealogy' from Hulme to Eliot, Pound, Ford Madox Ford and Wyndham Lewis. His novel Christopher Homm experiments with form and is told backwards.
Sisson served in the British Army during World War II in India and joined the Ministry of Labour in 1936. He worked as a civil servant and wrote a standard text The Spirit of British Administration (1959) arising from his work and a comparison with other European methods. Sisson was a 'severe critic of the Civil Service and some of his essays caused controversy'. In his collection The London Zoo he writes this epitaph 'Here lies a civil servant. He was civil/ To everyone, and servant to the devil.'

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C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland. He is known for both his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy and his nonfiction, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles and The Problem of Pain.
Lewis and fellow novelist J. R. R. Tolkien were close friends. Both authors served on the English faculty at Oxford University, and both were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptised in the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion) at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to the Anglican Communion, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England". His faith had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.

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Charles Eliot Norton
Charles Eliot Norton, (November 16, 1827 - October 21, 1908) was a leading American author, social critic, and professor of art. He was a militant idealist, a progressive social reformer, and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States.
Norton was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Andrews Norton (1786–1853) was a Unitarian theologian, and Dexter professor of sacred literature at Harvard; his mother was Catherine Eliot, and Charles William Eliot, president of Harvard, was his cousin. Norton graduated from Harvard in 1846, and started in business with an East Indian trading firm in Boston, travelling to India in 1849. After a tour in Europe, where he was influenced by John Ruskin and pre-Raphaelite painters, he returned to Boston in 1851, and devoted himself to literature and art. He translated Dante's Vita Nuova (1860 and 1867) and the Divina Commedia (1891-91-92), 3 vols.). He worked tirelessly as secretary to the Loyal Publication Society during the Civil War, communicating with newspaper editors across the country, including the journalist Jonathan Baxter Harrison who became a lifelong close friend. From 1864 to 1868, he edited the highly influential magazine North American Review, in association with James Russell Lowell. In 1861 he and Lowell helped Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his translation of Dante and in the starting of the informal Dante Club. In 1862 Norton married Susan Sedgwick, creating what for a time became the wealthiest family in Boston.

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Charles of Valois
Charles of Valois (12 March 1270 – 16 December 1325) was the fourth son of Philip III of France and Isabella of Aragon. His mother was a daughter of James I of Aragon and Yolande of Hungary. He was a member of the House of Capet and founded the House of Valois. In 1284, he was created Count of Valois (as Charles I) by his father and, in 1290, received the title of Count of Anjou from his marriage to Margaret of Anjou.
Moderately intelligent, disproportionately ambitious and quite greedy, Charles of Valois collected principalities. He had as appanage the counties of Valois, Alençon and Perche (1285). He became in 1290 count of Anjou and of Maine by his marriage with Margaret, eldest daughter of Charles II, titular king of Sicily; by a second marriage, contracted with the heiress of Baldwin II de Courtenay, last Latin emperor of Constantinople, he also had pretensions on this throne. But he was son, brother, brother-in-law and son-in-law of kings or of queens (of France, of Navarre, of England, and of Naples), becoming, moreover, after his death, father of a king (Philip VI).

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Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer ( /ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1343 – 25 October 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde, he is best known today for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, though the precise date and location of his birth remain unknown. His father and grandfather were both London vintners; several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich. (His family name derives from the French chausseur, meaning "shoemaker".) In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the twelve-year-old boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and the £250 fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure—bourgeois, if not elite. John Chaucer married Agnes Copton, who, in 1349, inherited properties including 24 shops in London from her uncle, Hamo de Copton, who is described in a will dated April 3, 1354 and listed in the City Hustings Roll as "moneyer"; he was said to be moneyer at the Tower of London. In the City Hustings Roll 110, 5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie' .

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Ciampolo
Ciampolo (also Giampolo, "John Paul") is the accepted name of a character in Dante's Divine Comedy.
Ciampolo appears in Canto XXII of the Inferno, where he is a grafter in the fifth ditch of the eighth circle. Ciampolo is hooked by the devils (the Malebanche, "Evil Claws") that patrol that ditch, and pulled out of the boiling pitch where the grafters are immersed, which represent their sticky fingers and corrupt deals. Threatened by the devils, Ciampolo tells Dante the identity of some of the other grafters punished there. Ciampolo eventually tricks the devils, and makes his escape back to the boiling pitch.
Dante does not identify Ciampolo by name, but his name was provided by early commentators. Nothing else is really known about him other that the information provided by Dante: that he was born in Navarre, that his father was a wastrel, and that he served King Theobald II of Navarre.

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Constance of Sicily
Constance of Hauteville (2 November 1154 – 27 November 1198) was the heiress of the Norman kings of Sicily and the wife of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. She was Queen of Sicily in 1194-1198, jointly with her husband from 1194 to 1197, and with her infant son Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1198.
Constance was the posthumous daughter of Roger II of Sicily by his third wife Beatrice of Rethel.
Constance was not betrothed until she was thirty, which is unusual for a princess whose marriage was an important dynastic bargaining chip. This later gave rise to stories that she had become a nun and required papal dispensation to forsake her vows and marry, or that she was impossibly ugly. Neither supposition is consistent with the evidence.
The death of her younger nephew Henry of Capua in 1172 made Constance heiress presumptive to the Sicilian crown, after her elder nephew King William II, who did not marry until 1177, and whose marriage remained childless. Abulafia (1988) points out that William did not foresee the union of German and Sicilian crowns as a serious eventuality; his purpose was to consolidate an alliance, with an erstwhile enemy of Norman power in Italy.

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Corso Donati
Corso Donati was a leader of the Black Guelph faction in 13th- and early 14th- century Florence.
In the late thirteenth century, power in Florence and the other Tuscan cities was divided between the Podestà, an outsider who served as chief magistrate, and the guildmasters; Corso served as Podestà of Bologna in 1283 and 1288, and of Pistoia in 1289. In 1289, as captain of the people in Pistoia, he led a group of 60 soldiers in the Battle of Campaldino, in which the Guelphs defeated the Ghibellines and cemented their control over Florence.
In 1293, the merchants of Florence, led by Giano della Bella, prevented the nobility from taking the office of guildmaster; Corso led the noble faction which aligned with the working class against the merchants. In 1294 Corso was acquitted of killing a man in a fight; an angry mob came to della Bella seeking justice after the acquittal, but he sent them away whereupon they rioted and della Bella was exiled as having caused the riot. At that time, the Cerchi family, leaders of the merchant faction who had long feuded with the Donati, became allied with the White Guelphs while the Donati allied with the Black Guelphs, similar factions which had arisen in Pistoia. The leaders of both Guelph factions, including Corso, were exiled by the merchants in 1300, but the White Guelphs were soon allowed to return. Corso and the Black Guelphs petitioned Pope Boniface VIII for aid, and returned to Florence with Charles of Valois in November 1301, killing or exiling many White Guelphs. One of the exiled was the famous poet Dante Alighieri, who by marrying Gemma Donati had become a distant relative of Corso.

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Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante (UK /ˈdænti/, US /ˈdɑːnteɪ/; Italian: [ˈdante]; c1265–1321), was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem Commedia, later named La divina commedia (Divine Comedy), considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.
In Italy he is known as il Sommo Poeta ("the Supreme Poet") or just il Poeta. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains" or "the three crowns". Dante is also called the "Father of the Italian language".
Dante was born in Florence, Italy. The exact date of Dante's birth is unknown, although it is generally believed to be around 1265. This can be deduced from autobiographic allusions in La Divina Commedia, "the Inferno" (Halfway through the journey we are living, implying that Dante was around 35 years old, as the average lifespan according to the Bible (Psalms 89:10, Vulgate) is 70 years; and as the imaginary travel took place in 1300, Dante must have been born around 1265). Some verses of the Paradiso section of the Divine Comedy also provide a possible clue that he was born under the sign of Gemini: "As I revolved with the eternal twins, I saw revealed from hills to river outlets, the threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious" (XXII 151-154). In 1265 the Sun was in Gemini approximately during the period of May 11 to June 11.

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Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (usually pronounced /ˈseɪ.ərz/, although Sayers herself preferred [ˈsɛːz] and encouraged the use of her middle initial to facilitate this pronunciation;Oxford, 13 June 1893 – Witham, 17 December 1957) was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between World War I and World War II that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. She is also known for her plays and essays.
Sayers, an only child, was born on 13 June 1893 at the Head Master's House, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, where her father, the Rev. Henry Sayers, M.A., was chaplain of Christ Church and headmaster of the Choir School. (When she was six he started teaching her Latin.) She grew up in the tiny village of Bluntisham-cum-Earith in Huntingdonshire, after her father was given the living there as rector. The Regency rectory is an elegant building, while the church graveyard features the surnames of several characters from her mystery The Nine Tailors. The proximity of the River Great Ouse and the Fens invites comparison with the book's vivid description of a massive flood around the village.

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Dorothy Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (usually pronounced /ˈseɪ.ərz/, although Sayers herself preferred [ˈsɛːz] and encouraged the use of her middle initial to facilitate this pronunciation;Oxford, 13 June 1893 – Witham, 17 December 1957) was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between World War I and World War II that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. She is also known for her plays and essays.
Sayers, an only child, was born on 13 June 1893 at the Head Master's House, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, where her father, the Rev. Henry Sayers, M.A., was chaplain of Christ Church and headmaster of the Choir School. (When she was six he started teaching her Latin.) She grew up in the tiny village of Bluntisham-cum-Earith in Huntingdonshire, after her father was given the living there as rector. The Regency rectory is an elegant building, while the church graveyard features the surnames of several characters from her mystery The Nine Tailors. The proximity of the River Great Ouse and the Fens invites comparison with the book's vivid description of a massive flood around the village.

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Erich Auerbach
Erich Auerbach (November 9, 1892 – October 13, 1957) was a philologist and comparative scholar and critic of literature. His best-known work is Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, a history of representation in Western literature from ancient to modern times and frequently cited as a classic in the study of realism in literature.
Auerbach, who was Jewish, was born in Berlin. He was trained in the German philological tradition and would eventually become, along with Leo Spitzer, one of its best-known scholars.[1] After participating as combatant in World War I, he earned a doctorate in 1921 at University of Greifswald and in 1929 became a member of the philology faculty at the University of Marburg, publishing a well-received study entitled Dante: Poet of the Secular World. With the rise of National Socialism, however, Auerbach was forced to vacate his position in 1935. Exiled from Nazi Germany, he took up residence in Istanbul, Turkey, where he wrote Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), generally considered his masterwork.

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Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an American expatriate poet, critic and a major figure of the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his promotion of Imagism, a movement that derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His best-known works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos (1917–1969).
Working in London in the early 20th century as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, Pound helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost, and Ernest Hemingway. He was responsible for the publication in 1915 of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and for the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses. Hemingway wrote of him in 1925: "He defends [his friends] when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. ... He writes articles about them. He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying ... he advances them hospital expenses and dissuades them from suicide."

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Forese Donati
Forese Donati (died 1296)
Forese Donati, brother of Corso and Piccarda Donati, was a childhood friend of Dante Alighieri. In their youth, Forese and Dante exchanged a series of playful sonnets called tenzone, which take the form of a series of exchanged insults.
In the Divine Comedy Dante encounters Forese on the sixth terrace of Purgatory, where the gluttonous are punished by being forced to starve for food and drink while passing past them, similar to the punishment of Tantalous. Dante barely recognizes Forese's emaciated face and his friend's state causes him great grief. He expresses surprise at Forese's salvation - he had died five years before - and at his quick advancement through the terraces of Purgatory. Forese praises his wife Nella, whose prayers have allowed him to pass quickly through Purgatory.
Forese maligns the provocatively-dressed Florentine women and predicts that more restrictive dress codes will soon be enforced in Florence. Dante tells Forese of his journey through Hell and Purgatory, accompanied by Virgil, and asks about Forese's sister Piccarda. Forese informs Dante that Piccarda is now in Heaven, and goes on to identify other prominent personages on the terrace of the gluttons. Before leaving Dante, Forese predicts the coming death of his brother Corso and his descent into Hell.

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Francesca da Rimini
Francesca da Rimini or Francesca da Polenta (1255–1285) was the daughter of Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna. She was a historical contemporary of Dante Alighieri, who portrayed her as a character in the Divine Comedy.
Guido I da Polenta had been at war with the Malatesta family. When a peace was negotiated, Guido wanted to solidify it by marrying his daughter Francesca to the Malatestan heir, Giovanni Malatesta (Gianciotto), son of Malatesta da Verucchio, lord of Rimini. Giovanni was brave but deformed. Guido knew Francesca would refuse Giovanni, so the wedding was performed by proxy through Giovanni's handsome brother, Paolo.
Francesca fell in love with Paolo and was unaware of the deception until the morning after the wedding day.
According to Dante, Francesca and Paolo were seduced by reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, and became lovers. Subsequently they were surprised and murdered by Giovanni before they were able to repent. However, it is likely that the adultery was much more calculated. Both Francesca and the also-married Paolo had their own children. Dante used the romance of Lancelot in order to fit within the scheme of lyric love poetry, which Francesca emulates in her lines of Inferno's Canto V.

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Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt (German: [fʁant͡s lɪst]); Hungarian: Liszt Ferencz, in modern use Liszt Ferenc) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.
Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age. In the 1840s he was considered by some to be perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. He was also a well-known composer, piano teacher, and conductor. He was a benefactor to other composers, including Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.
As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School"). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony. He also played an important role in popularizing a wide array of music by transcribing it for piano.

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Frederick Copleston
Frederick Charles Copleston, SJ, CBE (10 April 1907 – 3 February 1994) was a Jesuit priest and historian of philosophy.
Copleston's family was Anglican (his uncle, Reginald Stephen Copleston, was a bishop of Calcutta), but he converted to Roman Catholicism while a pupil at Marlborough College, and became a Jesuit in 1929. He studied and later lectured at Heythrop College and, seeing the poor standard of philosophical teaching in seminaries, wrote an influential eleven-volume History of Philosophy (1946–75), which is highly respected.
He is well known for debating the existence of God with Bertrand Russell in a celebrated 1948 BBC broadcast; the following year he debated logical positivism and the meaningfulness of religious language with his friend the analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer.
One of Copleston's most significant contributions to modern philosophy was his work on the theories of St Thomas Aquinas. He attempted to clarify Aquinas's Five Ways (in the Summa Theologica) by making a distinction between in fieri causes and in esse causes. By doing so Copleston makes clear that Aquinas wanted to put forth the concept of an omnipresent God rather than a being that could have disappeared after setting the chain of cause and effect into motion.

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Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei (Italian pronunciation: [ɡaliˈlɛːo ɡaliˈlɛi]; 15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the Father of Modern Science".
His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter (named the Galilean moons in his honour), and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, inventing an improved military compass and other instruments.
Galileo's championing of heliocentrism was controversial within his lifetime, when most subscribed to either geocentrism or the Tychonic system. He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, and they concluded that it could only be supported as a possibility, not as an established fact. Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits, who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he wrote one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. Here he summarized the work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials.

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Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoˈvanni bokˈkattʃo]; 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular. Boccaccio is particularly notable for his dialogue, of which it has been said that it surpasses in verisimilitude that of virtually all of his contemporaries, since they were medieval writers and often followed formulaic models for character and plot.
The exact details of his birth are uncertain. The majority of sources state that he was born either in Florence or in a village near Certaldo where his family was from.Giovanni Villani, a contemporary of Boccaccio and chronicler, states that he was born in Paris as a consequence of an illicit relation but others denounce this as a romanticism by the earliest biographers. He was the son of a Florentine merchant and an unknown woman, and almost certainly born illegitimate.

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Gustave Doré
Paul Gustave Doré (French pronunciation: [pɔl ɡystav dɔʁe]; January 6, 1832 – January 23, 1883) was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.
Doré was born in Strasbourg and his first illustrated story was published at the age of fifteen. His talent was evident even earlier, however. At age five he had been a prodigy troublemaker, playing pranks that were mature beyond his years. Seven years later, he began carving in cement. Subsequently, as a young man, he began work as a literary illustrator in Paris, winning commissions to depict scenes from books by Rabelais, Balzac, Milton and Dante.
In 1853, Doré was asked to illustrate the works of Lord Byron. This commission was followed by additional work for British publishers, including a new illustrated English Bible. A decade later, he illustrated a French edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote, and his depictions of the knight and his squire, Sancho Panza, have become so famous that they have influenced subsequent readers, artists, and stage and film directors' ideas of the physical "look" of the two characters. Doré also illustrated an oversized edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", an endeavor that earned him 30,000 francs from publisher Harper & Brothers in 1883.

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Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (born July 11, 1930) is an American literary critic and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Since the publication of his first book in 1959, Bloom has written more than 20 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He has edited hundreds of anthologies.
Bloom teaches two classes at Yale: one on the plays of William Shakespeare; the other on poetry from Geoffrey Chaucer to Hart Crane. Some of his writing had reflected this teaching, from Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998) to The Anatomy of Influence (2011), which he has called the summa of his career.
Bloom's career began with decades of studying the Romantic poets, in particular Percy Bysshe Shelley, W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens. From this study, combined with the influence of Freud, Emerson and many others, Bloom developed theories of poetic influence, marked by the publication of The Anxiety of Influence (1973). These theories dominated his writing for a decade, after which he began to focus on what he named "religious criticism", in books such as The Book of J (1990) and The American Religion (1992). Another shift in his career began with an impassioned defense of the non-politicised teaching of canonical literature in The Western Canon (1994). He has continued his religious criticism in books such as Jesus and Yahweh (2005) and The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of The King James Bible (2011).

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Henry Francis Cary
Henry Francis Cary (6 December 1772 – 14 August 1844) was a British author and translator, best known for his blank verse translation of The Divine Comedy of Dante.
Henry Francis Cary was born in Gibraltar, on 6 December 1772. He was the eldest son of William Cary, at the time a Captain of the First Regiment of Foot, by Henrietta daughter of Theophilus Brocas, Dean of Killala. His grandfather, Henry Cary was archdeacon, and his great grandfather, Mordecai Cary, bishop of that diocese.
He was educated at the grammar schools of Rugby, Sutton Coldfield and Birmingham, and at Christ Church, Oxford, which he entered in 1790 and studied French and Italian literature. While at school he regularly contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine, and published a volume of Sonnets and Odes. He took holy orders and in 1797 became vicar of Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire. He held this benefice until his death. In 1800 he also became vicar of Kingsbury in Warwickshire.
At Christ Church he studied French and Italian literature which can be seen in his notes to his translation of Dante. The version of the Inferno was published in 1805 together with the original text.

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Ibn Arabi
Ibn ʿArabī (Arabic: ابن عربي‎) (Murcia July 28, 1165 – Damascus November 10, 1240) was an Arab Andalusian Sufi mystic and philosopher.
He was sometimes referred to as "the Son of Plato" (Ibn Aflatun) for his devotion to Plato.
'Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī (أبو عبد الله محمد ابن علي ابن محمد ابن عربي ) was born into a respectable family in Murcia, Taifa of Murcia on the 17th of Ramaḍān 561 AH (27th or 28 July 1165 AD). Muḥyiddin Muḥammad ibn ‘Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn ‘Arabī was widely known as al-Shaykh al-Akbar; in medieval Europe he was called Doctor Maximus.
His father, ‘Ali ibn Muḥammad, served in the Army of ibn Mardanīsh. When ibn Mardanīsh died in 1172 AD, ‘Ali ibn Muḥammad swiftly shifted his allegiance to the Almohad Sultan, Abū Ya’qūb Yūsuf I, and became one of his military advisers. His family then relocated from Murcia to Seville.
ibn ‘Arabī’s dogmatic and intellectual training began in Seville, then the cultural and civilized center of Muslim Iberia, in 578 AH. Most of his teachers were the clergy of the Almohad era and some of them also held the official posts of Qadi or Khatib. He was a young boy when his father sent him to the renowned jurist Abū Bakr ibn Khalaf to study the Qur'an. ibn ‘Arabī learned the recitation of the Qur'an from the book of Al-Kafi in the seven different Qira'at. The same work was also transmitted to him by another ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Ghālib ibn al-Sharrāt. At the age of ten, he was well-versed in the Qira’āt; afterwards he learned the sciences of Hadith, Fiqh and Sirah from the famous scholars of the time such as Al-Suhayli.

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Jacopo Alighieri
Jacopo Alighieri (1289–1348) was an Italian poet, the son of Dante Alighieri, whom he followed in his exile. Jacopo's most famous work is his sixty-chapter Dottrinale.
Born in 1289 in Florence, Jacopo was the son of Dante Alighieri and his wife, Gemma di Manetto Donati.
He was exiled from Florence with his father and brothers Giovanni and Pietro in 1315. He subsequently traveled to Ravenna, where may have lived with his father. Dante died in 1321, and Jacopo sent a copy of the Divine Comedy to Guido da Polenta, the lord of the city. In 1325, he returned to Florence, where he took minor orders, making it possible for him to become a canon in Verona. At home, he took charge of his family's financial affairs; in 1343, he was able to retake possession of his father's confiscated property.
He died in 1348.

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James Fenton
James Martin Fenton (born 25 April 1949, Lincoln) is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry.
Born in Lincoln, Fenton grew up in Lincolnshire and Staffordshire, the son of Canon John Fenton, a noted biblical scholar. He was educated at the Durham Choristers School, Repton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He graduated with a B.A. in 1970.
Fenton acquired at school an enthusiasm for the work of W.H. Auden. At Oxford John Fuller, who happened to be writing A Reader's Guide to W.H. Auden at the time, further encouraged that enthusiasm. Auden became possibly the greatest single influence on Fenton's own work.
In his first year at university Fenton won the Newdigate Prize for his sonnet sequence Our Western Furniture. Later published by Fuller's Sycamore Press, it largely concerns the cultural collision in the 19th century between the United States and Japan. It displays in embryo many of the characteristics that define Fenton's later work: technical mastery combined with a fascination with issues that arise from the Western interaction with other cultures. Our Western Furniture was followed by Exempla, notable for its frequent use of unfamiliar words, as well as commonplace words employed in an unfamiliar manner.

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James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominently the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
Joyce was born to a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."

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John Ciardi
John Anthony Ciardi (CHAR-dee) (June 24, 1916 – March 30, 1986) was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet, he also translated Dante's Divine Comedy, wrote several volumes of children's poetry, pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, and directed the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont. In 1959, Ciardi published a book on how to read, write, and teach poetry, How Does a Poem Mean?, which has proven to be among the most-used books of its kind. At the peak of his popularity in the early 1960s, Ciardi also had a network television program on CBS, Accent. Ciardi's impact on poetry is perhaps best measured through the younger poets whom he influenced as a teacher and as editor of The Saturday Review.
Ciardi was born at home in Boston's Little Italy. After the death of his father in 1919, he was raised by his Italian mother (who was illiterate) and his three older sisters, all of whom scrimped and saved until they had enough money to send him to college. In 1921, two years after his father was killed in an automobile accident, the family moved to Medford, Massachusetts, where the young Ciardi peddled vegetables to the neighbors and attended public schools." "Ciardi began his higher studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, but transferred to Tufts University in Boston, where he studied under the poet John Holmes." "He received his degree in 1938, and won a scholarship to the University of Michigan, where he obtained his master's degree the next year and won the first of many awards for his poetry," e.g., the prestigious Hopwood Award in poetry.

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John the Apostle
John the Apostle (Aramaic Yoħanna, Koine Greek Ἰωάννης) (c. AD 6 – c. 100) was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He was the son of Zebedee and Salome and brother of James, son of Zebedee, another of the Twelve Apostles. Christian tradition holds that he outlived the remaining apostles—all of whom suffered martyrdom (except Judas Iscariot)—and ultimately died of natural causes "in great old age in Ephesus" at the beginning of the second century. The Church Fathers consider him the same person as John the Evangelist, John of Patmos, and the Beloved Disciple.
The Church Fathers generally identify him as the author of five books in the New Testament: the Gospel of John, three Epistles of John, and the Book of Revelation. The Gospel according to John differs considerably from the synoptic gospels, likely written decades earlier than John's Gospel. The bishops of Asia Minor supposedly requested him to write his gospel to deal with the heresy of the Ebionites, who asserted that Christ did not exist before Mary. John probably knew and undoubtedly approved of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but these gospels spoke of Jesus primarily in the year following the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist). Around 600, however, Sophronius of Jerusalem noted that "two epistles bearing his name ... are considered by some to be the work of a certain John the Elder" and, while stating that Revelation was written by John on Patmos, it was “later translated by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus”, presumably in an attempt to reconcile tradition with the obvious differences in Greek style. On the other hand, many authors in those days employed secretaries often called scribes whose personal styles influenced the final documents. John perhaps employed different scribes for his several works who dictated his words as he was influenced by the Holy Spirit through his meditation, visions, and dreams.

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Laurence Binyon
Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 at Lancaster – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services.
Laurence Binyon's parents were Frederick Binyon, a Quaker minister, and Mary Dockray. Mary's father, Robert Benson Dockray, was the main engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway. The family were Quakers.
Binyon studied at St Paul's School. There he read Classics (Honour Moderations) at Trinity College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1891.
Immediately after graduating in 1893, Binyon started working for the Department of Printed Books of the British Museum, writing catalogs for the museum and art monographs for himself. In 1895 his first book, Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century, was published. In that same year, Binyon moved into the Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings, under Campbell Dodgson. In 1909, Binyon became its Assistant Keeper, and in 1913 he was made the Keeper of the new Sub-Department of Oriental Prints and Drawings. Around this time he played a crucial role in the formation of Modernism in London by introducing young Imagist poets such as Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D. to East Asian visual art and literature. Many of Binyon's books produced while at the Museum were influenced by his own sensibilities as a poet, although some are works of plain scholarship - such as his four-volume catalogue of all the Museum's English drawings, and his seminal catalogue of Chinese and Japanese prints.

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Lodovico Dolce
Lodovico Dolce (1508/10-1568) was an Italian theorist of painting. He was a broadly-based Venetian humanist and prolific author, translator and editor; he is now remembered for his Dialogue on Painting.
The date of Dolce's birth, long accepted as 1508, has been more likely set in 1510. Dolce's youth was difficult. His father, a former steward to the public attorneys (castaldo delle procuratorie) for the Republic of Venice, died when the boy was only two. For his early studies, he depended on the support of two patrician families: that of the doge Leonardo Loredano (see Dolce's dedication of his Dialogue on Painting) and the Cornaro family, who financed his studies at Padua.
After he completed his studies, Dolce found work in Venice with the press of Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari. He was one of the most active intellectuals in 16th-century Venice. Claudia Di Filippo Bareggi claims that over the course of thirty-six years Dolce was responsible for 96 editions of his own original work, 202 editions of other writers, and at least 54 translations. As a popularizer, he worked to make information available to the non-specialist, those too busy to learn Greek and Latin.

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Mark Musa
Mark Musa is a graduate of Rutgers University (B.A., 1956), the University of Florence (as Fulbright Scholar 1956-1958), and the Johns Hopkins University (M.A., 1959; Ph.D., 1961). He is a former Guggenheim fellow and the author of a number of books and articles. Best known for his translations of the Italian classics (Dante and the poetry of the Middle Ages), he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German French and Italian at Indiana University. Mr. Musa has also translated and edited The Portable Dante and, with Peter Bondanella, The Portable Machiavelli, both published with Penguin Books.

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Mikhail Lozinsky
Mikhail Leonidovich Lozinsky (Russian: Михаил Леонидович Лозинский, 20 July 1886 – 31 January 1955) is deemed to be the most accomplished Russian translator of the 20th century. "In the difficult and noble art of translation," said Anna Akhmatova, "Lozinsky was for the twentieth century what Zhukovsky was for the nineteenth." Lozinsky's granddaughters include writers Tatyana Tolstaya and Natalia Tolstaya.
Lozinsky was born in Gatchina and spent his life in St. Petersburg. His uncle was married to an aunt of Alexander Blok, who was one of the first to appreciate Lozinsky's highly polished verse. During the Silver Age of Russian Poetry he was close to the Acmeist circle of Nikolay Gumilyov; he was briefly arrested and interrogated following the latter's execution.
Despite his impeccable craftsmanship, Lozinsky's poetry failed to attract public attention owing to its lack of substance and originality. Lozinsky therefore began applying his literary skills to the translation of works by notable non-Russian literary figures such as Benvenuto Cellini, Lope de Vega, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and others. In his diary, Blok noted that some of Lozinsky's translations were superior to those of Zhukovsky, who had been regarded as a model for Russian verse translators for generations.

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Muhammad
Muhammad (c. 26 April 570 – 8 June 632; also transliterated as Mohammad, Mohammed, or Muhammed; Arabic: محمد‎), full name: Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib (Arabic: محمد بن عبدالله بن عبد المطلب ‎) was a leader from Mecca who unified the tribes of Arabia into a single religious polity under Islam. He is believed by Muslims and Bahá'ís to be a messenger and prophet of God. Muslims believe that Islam was not his own invention but was revealed by God, and most consider him to be the last prophet of God Muslims thus consider him the restorer of an uncorrupted original monotheistic faith (islām) of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets.
Born in 570 CE in the Arabian city of Mecca, he was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the care of his uncle Abu Talib. He later worked mostly as a merchant, as well as a shepherd, and was first married by age 25. Being in the habit of periodically retreating to a cave in the surrounding mountains for several nights of meditation and prayer, he later reported that it was there, at age 40, that he received his first revelation from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" to Him (lit. islām) is the only way (dīn) acceptable to God, and that he himself was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as other Islamic prophets.

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Osip Mandelstam
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (Russian: О́сип Эми́льевич Мандельшта́м; IPA: [ˈosʲɪp ɪˈmʲilʲjɪvʲɪt͡ɕ məndʲɪlʲˈʂtam]; January 15 [O.S. January 3] 1891 – December 27, 1938) was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets. He was arrested by Joseph Stalin's government during the repression of the 1930s and sent into internal exile with his wife Nadezhda. Given a reprieve of sorts, they moved to Voronezh in southwestern Russia. In 1938 Mandelstam was arrested again and sentenced to a camp in Siberia. He died that year at a transit camp.
Mandelstam was born in Warsaw (then part of the Russian Empire) to a wealthy Polish Jewish family. His father, a leather merchant by trade, was able to receive a dispensation freeing the family from the pale of settlement and, soon after Osip's birth, they moved to Saint Petersburg. In 1900, Mandelstam entered the prestigious Tenishevsky School. The writer Vladimir Nabokov and other significant figures of Russian and Soviet culture have been among its alumni. His first poems were printed in 1907 in the school's almanac.

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Paolo Malatesta
Paolo Malatesta (c. 1246 – 1285) was the third son of Malatesta da Verucchio, lord of Rimini. He is best known for the story of his affair with Francesca da Polenta, portrayed by Dante in a famous episode of his Inferno (Canto V). He was the brother of Giovanni (Gianciotto) and Malatestino Malatesta.
Paolo married in 1269 with Orabile Beatrice, last countess of Ghiaggiolo; the title was inherited by their son Uberto. Despite usually depicted as a romantic man with little attention to worldly matters, the historical Paolo was long present alongside his father in the wars against the Ghibellines of Romagna. In 1265 he fought against Guido da Montefeltro and, together with Guido da Polenta of Ravenna, against the Traversari.
In March 1282 Pope Martin IV chose him as podestà of Florence; in this occasion probably Dante met him. Paolo's career was however halted when his relationship with Francesca da Polenta was discovered by her husband Gianciotto, who killed them.
Forty years later, around 1323, Paolo's son, Ramberto, claimed to have avenged his father's death by murdering Gianciotto's son and successor, Uberto, Count of Giaggolo at a banquet in his home.

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Piccarda
Piccarda Donati was a 13th century Italian noblewoman. She appears as a character in Dante's classic Divine Comedy.
Piccarda, sister of Corso Donati and of Dante's friend Forese Donati, is the first character Dante encounters in Paradise. She is on the Sphere of the Moon, the lowest sphere of Heaven. Piccarda explains to Dante that her placement is due to "vows neglected and, in part, no longer valid." When she was alive, Piccarda, a nun, was forcibly removed from her convent by her brother Corso, in order to marry her to a Florentine man and further her family's political interests. She died soon after her wedding. In her acquiescence to her brother's wishes, though forced, she neglected her vows to God.
Through Dante's encounter with Piccarda, we first begin to learn about the nature of Heaven. For example, we learn that souls in Heaven become much more beautiful than they were on Earth; in fact, it takes Dante a while to actually recognize Piccarda as the woman he knew. In higher spheres, souls become so beautiful they cease to resemble their earthly selves. Piccarda is the only person Dante will recognize, unaided, in Heaven.

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Pope Boniface VIII
Pope Boniface VIII (c. 1235 – 11 October 1303), born Benedetto Gaetani, was Pope of the Catholic Church from 1294 to 1303. Today, he is probably best remembered for his feuds with Dante, who placed him in the Eighth Circle of Hell in his Divina Commedia, among the simonists.
Benedetto was born in 1235 in Anagni, c. 50 kilometres southeast of Rome. He was the younger son of a minor noble family, the Gaetani. He took his first steps in the religious life when he was sent to the monastery of the Friars Minor in Velletri, where he was put under the care of his uncle Fra Leonardo Patrasso. He became a canon of the cathedral in Anagni in his teens. In 1252, when his uncle Pietro Gaetani became Bishop of Todi, in Umbria, Benedetto went with him and began his legal studies there. Benedetto never forgot his roots in Todi, later describing the city as "the dwelling place of his early youth," the city which "nourished him while still of tender years," and as a place where he "held lasting memories". In 1260, Benedetto acquired a canonry in Todi, as well as the small nearby castle of Sismano. Later in life he repeatedly expressed his gratitude to Anagni, Todi, and his family.

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Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy ( /ˈtɒləmi/; Greek: Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος, Klaudios Ptolemaios; Latin: Claudius Ptolemaeus; c. AD 90 – c. AD 168), was a Greek-Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid. This theory, proposed by Theodore Meliteniotes, could be correct, but it is late (ca. 1360) and unsupported. There is no reason to suppose that he ever lived anywhere else than Alexandria, where he died around AD 168.
Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, at least three of which were of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest (in Greek, Ἡ Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, "The Great Treatise", originally Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις, "Mathematical Treatise"). The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise known sometimes in Greek as the Apotelesmatika (Ἀποτελεσματικά), more commonly in Greek as the Tetrabiblos (Τετράβιβλος "Four books"), and in Latin as the Quadripartitum (or four books) in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day.

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Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин, tr. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin; IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandr sʲɪˈrɡʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn] ( listen); 6 June [O.S. 26 May] 1799 – 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1837) was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.
Born into the Russian nobility in Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo.
While under the strict surveillance of the Tsar's political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play, the drama Boris Godunov. His novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, was serialized between 1825 and 1832.
Notoriously touchy about his honour, Pushkin fought a total of twenty-nine duels, and was fatally wounded in such an encounter with Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès. D'Anthès, a French officer serving with the Chevalier Guard Regiment, had been attempting to seduce the poet's wife, Natalya Pushkina. Pushkin's early death at the age of 37 is still regarded as a catastrophe for Russian literature.

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René Guenon
René Guénon (November 15, 1886 – January 7, 1951), also known as Shaykh `Abd al-Wahid Yahya, was a French author and intellectual who remains an influential figure in the domain of metaphysics, having written on topics ranging from metaphysics, "sacred science" and traditional studies to symbolism and initiation.
In his writings, he proposes either "to expose directly some aspects of Eastern metaphysical doctrines", these doctrines being defined by him as of "universal character", or "to adapt these same doctrines for Western readers while keeping strictly faithful to their spirit"; he only endorsed the act of "handing down" these Eastern doctrines, while reiterating their "non-personal character".
He wrote and published in French and his works have been translated into more than twenty languages.
René Guénon was born in Blois, a city in central France approximately 100 miles (~ 160 km) from Paris. Guénon, like most Frenchmen of the time, was born into a Roman Catholic family. Little is known of his family, although it appears that his father was an architect. By 1904, Guénon was living as a student in Paris, where his studies focused on mathematics and philosophy. He was known as a brilliant student, notably in mathematics, in spite of his poor health.

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Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his own poetry. His published work also includes critically acclaimed translations, including a collection of poems by Czesław Miłosz and Dante Alighieri. He teaches at Boston University and is the poetry editor at Slate.
Robert Pinsky was born on October 20, 1940, in Long Branch, New Jersey, where he attended Long Branch High School. He received a B.A. from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and earned both an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow in creative writing. He was a student of poet & critic Yvor Winters at Stanford.
Early on, Pinsky was inspired by the flow and tension of jazz and the excitement that it made him feel. He said it was an incredible experience that he has tried to reproduce in his poetry. The musicality of poetry was and is extremely important to his work.

wn.com/Robert_Pinsky
Ron Terpening
Ron Terpening (born Ronnie Harold Terpening on May 3, 1946) is an American writer, professor of Italian, and editor. Though he started his writing career as an author of young-adult fiction, where the father/son conflict is a major theme, he is best known for his later novels of suspense, most of which are set, at least in part, in Italy, reflecting his academic background as a scholar of Italian culture. His thriller League of Shadows, for example, deals with the Fascist Era in Italy and its aftermath in the contemporary world. A later international thriller, Nine Days in October, came out of the author’s course research on the forces of order and disorder in contemporary Italy and follows a band of criminals and ex-terrorists as they attempt to carry out an assassination plot. All of his novels, including Storm Track and Tropic of Fear, the latter set in Paraguay, are noted for their strong sense of place. In most of his novels, his protagonist is usually a common man placed in a situation where powerful forces are arrayed against him.

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Saint Peter
Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader and one of the twelve apostles of Jesus who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and who is venerated as a saint. The son of John or of Jonah, he was from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee or Gaulanitis. His brother Andrew was also an apostle. Peter is venerated in multiple churches and is regarded as the first Pope by the Catholic Church. After working to establish the church of Antioch, presiding for seven years as the leader of the city's Christian community, he preached to scattered communities of believers, Jews, Hebrew Christians and the gentiles, in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia Minor and Bithynia.^{[citation needed]} He then went to Rome, where in the second year of Claudius, it is claimed, he overthrew Simon Magus and held the Sacerdotal Chair for 25 years.^{[citation needed]} He is said to have been put to death at the hand of Emperor Nero.
Peter wrote two General epistles. The Gospel of Mark is also ascribed to him (as Mark was his disciple and interpreter). On the other hand, several books bearing his name—the Acts of Peter, Gospel of Peter, Preaching of Peter, Revelation of Peter, and Judgement of Peter—are rejected by the Catholic Church as Apocryphal.

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Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in France for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.
Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career.
Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.
The Becketts were members of the Anglican Church of Ireland. The family home, Cooldrinagh in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court built in 1903 by Samuel's father, William. The house and garden, together with the surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse, the Foxrock railway station and Harcourt Street station at the city terminus of the line, all feature in his prose and plays. Beckett's father was a quantity surveyor and his mother a nurse.

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Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney (/ˈʃeɪməs ˈhiːni/; born 13 April 1939) is an Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer and recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born at Mossbawn farmhouse between Castledawson and Toomebridge, he now resides in Dublin.
As well as the Nobel Prize in Literature, Heaney has received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968), the E. M. Forster Award (1975), the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001), T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and two Whitbread Prizes (1996 and 1999). He has been a member of Aosdána since its foundation and has been Saoi since 1997. He was both the Harvard and the Oxford Professor of Poetry and was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1996. Heaney's personal papers are held by the National Library of Ireland.
Robert Lowell called him "the most important Irish poet since Yeats" and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have echoed the sentiment that he is "the greatest poet of our age".
<poem> From Mid-Term Break
Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple, He lay in the four foot box as in a cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

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Siger of Brabant
Siger of Brabant (Sigerus, Sighier, Sigieri or Sygerius de Brabantia; c. 1240 – 1280s) was a 13th century philosopher from the southern Low Countries who was an important proponent of Averroism. He was considered a radical by the conservative members of the Roman Catholic Church, but it is suggested that he played as important a role as his contemporary Thomas Aquinas in the shaping of Western attitudes towards faith and reason.^{[citation needed]}
Little is known about many of the details of his life. In 1266 he was attached to the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris at the time when a riot erupted between the French and Picard "nations" of students—a series of loosely organized fraternities. The papal legate threatened Siger with execution as the ringleader of the Picard attack on the French, but no further action was taken. During the succeeding 10 years, he wrote the six works which are ascribed to him and were published under his name by Pierre Mandonnet in 1899. The titles of these treatises are:

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Stanley Lombardo
Stanley F. Lombardo (born 1943) is an American professor of Classics at the University of Kansas. He is best known for his translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid (published by the Hackett Publishing Company). The style of his translations is a more vernacular one, emphasizing conversational English rather than the formal tone of some older American English translations of classical verse. Lombardo designs his translations to be performed orally, as they were in ancient Greece. He also performs the poems, and has recorded them as audio books. In performance he also likes to play the drums, much like Ezra Pound.
Lombardo is a native of New Orleans. He has a B.A. from Loyola University in New Orleans, an M.A. from Tulane University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas (1976). In 1976 he joined the faculty at the University of Kansas, where he served as department chair for fifteen years and teaches Greek and Latin at all levels, as well as general courses on Greek literature and culture. He was appointed University of Kansas Honors Program director in 2004.

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T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and "arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century." Although he was born an American, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.
The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—started in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915—is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement, and was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
Eliot was born into the Eliot family, a middle class family originally from New England, who had moved to St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Henry Ware Eliot (1843–1919), was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St. Louis. His mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843–1929), wrote poetry and was a social worker, a new profession in the early twentieth century. Eliot was the last of six surviving children; his parents were both 44 years old when he was born. His four sisters were between eleven and nineteen years older; his brother was eight years older. Known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather Thomas Stearns.

wn.com/T._S._Eliot
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil /ˈvɜrdʒəl/ in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes attributed to him.
Virgil is traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His Aeneid has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome from the time of its composition to the present day. Modeled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid follows the Trojan refugee Aeneas as he struggles to fulfill his destiny and arrive on the shores of Italy—in Roman mythology the founding act of Rome. Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably the Divine Comedy of Dante, in which Virgil appears as Dante's guide through hell and purgatory.
Virgil's biographical tradition is thought to depend on a lost biography by Varius, Virgil's editor, which was incorporated into the biography by Suetonius and the commentaries of Servius and Donatus, the two great commentators on Virgil's poetry. Although the commentaries no doubt record much factual information about Virgil, some of their evidence can be shown to rely on inferences made from his poetry and allegorizing; thus, Virgil's biographical tradition remains problematic.

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W. S. Merwin
William Stanley Merwin (New York City, September 30, 1927) is an American poet, credited with over 30 books of poetry, translation and prose. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, Merwin's writing influence derived from his interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in Hawaii, he writes prolifically and is dedicated to the restoration of the islands' rainforests.
Merwin has received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (in both 1971 and 2009) and the Tanning Prize, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets, as well as the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2010, the Library of Congress named Merwin the seventeenth United States Poet Laureate to replace the outgoing Kay Ryan.
W. S. Merwin was born in New York City on September 30, 1927. He grew up on the corner of Fourth Street and New York Avenue in Union City, New Jersey until 1936, when his family moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania. As a child, he was enamored of the natural world, sometimes finding himself talking to the large tree in his back yard. He was also fascinated with things that he saw as links to the past, such as the building behind his home that had once been a barn that housed a horse and carriage. At the age of five he started writing out hymns for his father.

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William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".
Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England – indeed, to all forms of organised religion – Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary," and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".

wn.com/William_Blake

The Divine Comedy - Something For The Weekend

June 1996 - Divine Comedy Records - Taken from the album Casanova...

published: 26 Apr 2010

author: divinecomedyhq

Divine Comedy - National Express

Official Promo Video...

published: 18 Jul 2008

author: parlophone

The Divine Comedy - Tonight we fly

Tonight we fly Over the houses, the streets and the trees - Over the dogs down below; They...

published: 12 Aug 2007

author: teddyduchamp

The Divine Comedy - Generation Sex

Neil Hannon's (aka The Divine Comedy) video for the single Generation Sex. By www.esosdico...

published: 28 Jul 2006

author: DonAgrio

The Divine Comedy - Becoming More Like Alfie

The Divine Comedy - Becoming More Like Alfie video...

published: 15 May 2006

author: frousstax

The Divine Comedy - National Express video

The Divine Comedy - National Express video...

published: 28 May 2006

author: frousstax

Divine Comedy - Gin Soaked Boy

excellent song from an excellent band!...

published: 11 Feb 2007

author: eardrum

The Divine Comedy - Everybody knows that I love you

The Divine Comedy - Everybody knows that I love you video - Neil Hannon is great as usual...

published: 12 May 2006

author: frousstax

The divine comedy - our mutual friend

The divine Neil Hannon and his orchestra!...

published: 13 May 2006

author: l81

The Divine Comedy - Perfect Lovesong

The Divine Comedy - Perfect Lovesong video...

published: 21 May 2006

author: frousstax

The Divine Comedy - I Like

"I Like" is taken from the latest Divine Comedy album "Bang Goes The Knighthood" Both the ...

published: 22 Jul 2010

author: divinecomedyhq

The Divine Comedy - At The Indie Disco

The Divine Comedy's new single "At The Indie Disco" is taken from the new album "Bang Goes...

published: 28 Apr 2010

author: divinecomedyhq

The Divine Comedy - Something For The Weekend live

The Divine Comedy - Something For The Weekend live at the Palladium...

published: 12 Apr 2008

author: meEskondo

The Divine Comedy - Sunrise

Live At The Palladium DVD....

published: 16 Mar 2008

author: MarTenSaa

Kahn's Exeter Short Film

CG Shortfilm about Louis Kahn's Phillips Exeter Academy Library. Footage from "The Third ...

published: 01 Jul 2009

author: Alex Roman

Woolthorp v. Pendergrast

Incidentally, the source of their duel was over the level of irony in Dante’s “Divine Come...

published: 08 Feb 2009

author: 5-Second Films

Jules Verne cover designs by Jim Tierney

I designed covers for 4 Jules Verne novels as my senior Illustration thesis project at the...

published: 12 Feb 2010

author: Jim Tierney

The Greatness HD

“THE GREATNESS” BY YI ZHOU SOUNDTRACK PERFORMED BY ENNIO MORRICONE AND YI ZHOU The Great...

published: 08 Oct 2012

author: Yi Zhou

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photo: AP / Sebastian D'souza

FILE - In this Nov. 26, 2008 file photo, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the accused gunman walks at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India.

India hangs gunman from 2008 Mumbai attack

Herald Tribune

21 Nov 2012

MUMBAI, India - India executed the lone surviving gunman from the 2008 terror attack on Mumbai early Wednesday, India's home ministry said. Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani citizen, was one of 10 gunmen who rampaged through the streets of India's financial capital in November 2008, killing 166 people. Kasab was hung at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday at a jail in...(size: 4.5Kb)

photo: AP / Melanie Gouby

People walk past as M23 rebel soldier's take positions near the Heal Africa hospital in the center of Goma, Congo, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012.

DR Congo soldiers surrender to M23

Al Jazeera

21 Nov 2012

Hundreds of government soldiers and police in the Democratic Republic of Congo have surrendered to rebels at a stadium in Goma, Al Jazeera's Nazanine Moshiri has reported from the scene. The M23 rebel group, believed to be backed by Rwanda seized the strategic, provincial capital of Goma in eastern Congo on Tuesday, home to more than 1 million...(size: 18.7Kb)

photo: AP / Emilio Morenatti

Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry arrives at the Supreme Court compound in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Tuesday, March 24, 2009.

Pakistan's powerful military under scrutiny

Al Jazeera

22 Nov 2012

A new battle is underway in Pakistan with its powerful military front-and-centre, but the fight is not against armed insurgents or ideological extremists - this opponent is a muscle-flexing Supreme Court. For the first time in decades, the military's iron grip over the South Asian country has been challenged, and it remains to be seen if it will...(size: 23.7Kb)

photo: AP

On March 10, 1973, more than one week after seizing Wounded Knee, S.D., and starting a standoff with federal authorities, members of the Oglala Sioux tribe march to the cemetery where their ancestors were buried following the 1890 massacre at the site.

Amerindians and Politics of Thanksgiving and Black Friday

WorldNews.com

23 Nov 2012

Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. I was fortunate to have been raised near an American Indian archaeological spot located on the Great Plains. In elementary school, a fellow classmate would periodically bring and show grinding stones, arrow- and spearheads, stone farming implements, and pictures of what the excavated site may have...(size: 7.1Kb)

photo: UN / Logan Abassi

Hurricane Sandy passed to the west of Haiti on 25 October, 2012, causing heavy rains and strong winds, flooding homes and overflowing rivers. A woman walks through a flooded market in Port-au-Prince.

UN says carbon cuts too slow to curb dangerous warming

BBC News

21 Nov 2012

A report by the UN says global attempts to curb emissions of CO2 are falling well short of what is needed to stem dangerous climate change. The UN's Environment Programme says greenhouse gases are 14% above where they need to be in 2020 for temperature rises this century to remain below 2C. The authors say this target is still technically...(size: 3.5Kb)

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'50 Shades of Grey' misses Bad Sex in Fiction Awards

Detroit Free Press

23 Nov 2012

English author E.L. James' much-buzzed-about "50 Shades of Grey" didn't make it onto the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Awards short list. The list was established "to draw attention to the crude and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel -- and to discourage it," according to British newspaper the...(size: 4.1Kb)

JK Rowling misses cut for 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award

Newstrack India

21 Nov 2012

Tweet London, Nov. 21 (ANI): JK Rowling got lucky as she missed out on a nomination for 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award, for her new novel 'The Casual Vacancy.' The organisers revealed that - despite a "flood of nominations" - 'The Casual Vacancy' did not make the grade....(size: 2.0Kb)

Rowling misses cut for ‘Bad Sex in Fiction’ award

The Times of India

21 Nov 2012

J K Rowling got lucky as she missed out on a nomination for 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award, for her new novel 'The Casual Vacancy.' The organisers revealed that - despite a...(size: 1.1Kb)

Bad Sex Book Award 2012 nominations announced, '50 Shades of Grey' doesn't make the list

Celebrity Café

21 Nov 2012

There is more sex in books than what you read in J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy and E.L. James’ 50 Shades of Grey. The two novels were considered favorites for the most dreaded literary award, the Literary Review’s Bad Sex Award, but failed to make the cut. The magazine’s award celebrates its 20th anniversary this...(size: 2.1Kb)

Bad Sex in Fiction nomination for Canadian Nancy Huston

CBC

21 Nov 2012

Nancy Huston, a Canadian-born writer living in Paris, has received a dubious honour – a nomination for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.Nancy Huston is nominated for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for a passage from Infrared, her latest novel. (Laurent Rebours/Canadian Press) The annual contest by Britain’s Literary Review draws “attention to the crude,...(size: 2.7Kb)

Bad Sex In Fiction Awards: ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ Not Nominated For Dubious Prize

The Inquisitr

21 Nov 2012

Posted: November 21, 2012 Fifty Shades Of Grey may be the most famous erotic work of fiction at the moment but EL James was not nominated for the Bad Sex Awards. According to Jonathan Beckman, the senior editor at the Literary Review, Fifty Shades Of Grey was not included because the Bad Sex Awards exclude “pornographic and erotic...(size: 10.0Kb)

Bad Sex in Fiction Award: Which books beat out J.K. Rowling, 'Fifty Shades of Grey'

Entertainment Weekly

21 Nov 2012

Think you’ve had enough exposure to bad sex lit lately? (Ellen Degeneres, Kristen Stewart and your Facebook friends made sure you didn’t escape the abundance of Fifty Shades of Grey excerpts floating around the Interwebs this year.) Well, whether you like it or not, there’s more out there. A lot more. Award-worthy more. But by...(size: 2.8Kb)

Bad sex awards 2012 shortlist leaves out JK Rowling and EL James

The Guardian

20 Nov 2012

The Casual Vacancy and the Fifty Shades trilogy overlooked for dreaded literary prize...(size: 5.3Kb)

Bad Sex in Fiction finalists: Tom Wolfe yes, J.K. Rowling no

The Los Angeles Times

20 Nov 2012

It’s Bad Sex Day on the Internet today. Of course, every day is bad sex day on the Internet. But today's bad sex is actually enjoyable, and it arrives via the respected Literary Review of London and its Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Call it coitus ridiculous. It’s sex that’s so bad as to be laughable, in a delightfully literary kind...(size: 31.4Kb)

JK Rowling fails to make Bad Sex 2012 shortlist

The Independent

20 Nov 2012

Despite a “flood of recommendations” JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy has missed out on the shortlist of the Literary Review’s Bad Sex 2012 awards. The Harry Potter...(size: 1.1Kb)

Bad Sex in Fiction: Tom Wolfe shortlisted as JK Rowling misses out

BBC News

20 Nov 2012

Novelist Tom Wolfe is among the list of nominees for the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2012, having won the dubious accolade eight years ago. The organisers revealed that - despite a "flood of nominations" - JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy did not make the grade. The tongue-in-cheek award is designed to discourage badly-written sex...(size: 2.5Kb)

Fermanagh: Northern Ireland's lakeland county

BBC News

20 Nov 2012

County Fermanagh is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland and lies on the border with the Republic of Ireland. The landscape is an intricate patchwork quilt of woodland, forest, parkland and wetland, with 30% covered with lakes and waterways. Normally considered the wettest county, Knockarevan in Fermanagh recorded the highest temperature in...(size: 3.6Kb)

Bad Sex Award Nominations Did NOT Include JK Rowling

Huffington Post

20 Nov 2012

Eight nominees have been announced for the Bad Sex awards, a competition created by the Literary Review "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel." The competition is reserved for books that would not be categorized as erotic, so novels such as Fifty Shades of...(size: 8.0Kb)

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"The Divine Comedy" redirects here. For other uses, see The Divine Comedy (disambiguation).

"La commedia" redirects here. For other uses, see Commedia (disambiguation).

Dante shown holding a copy of the Divine Comedy, next to the entrance to Hell, the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and the city of Florence, with the spheres of Heaven above, in Michelino's fresco

This article is part of a series about Dante's Divine Comedy
Inferno · Purgatorio · Paradiso
v t e

The Divine Comedy (Italian: Divina Commedia) is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature,^[1] and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature.^[2] The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language.^[3] It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

On the surface, the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven;^[4] but at a deeper level, it represents allegorically the soul's journey towards God.^[5] At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas.^[6] Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse."^[7]

The work was originally simply titled Comedìa and was later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio. The first printed edition to add the word divine to the title was that of the Venetian humanist Lodovico Dolce,^[8] published in 1555 by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari.

1 Structure and story
2 Earliest manuscripts
3 Thematic concerns
- 3.1 Dante's personal involvement
- 3.2 Scientific themes
4 Islamic philosophy
5 Literary influence in the English-speaking world and beyond
6 In the arts
7 See also
8 Footnotes
9 External links

Structure and story [link]

File:MS Trivulziano 1080 incipit.jpg

Detail of a manuscript in Milan's Biblioteca Trivulziana (MS 1080), written in 1337 by Francesco di ser Nardo da Barberino, showing the beginning of Dante's Comedy

The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three canticas (Ital. pl. cantiche)—Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise)—each consisting of 33 cantos (Ital. pl. canti). An initial canto serves as an introduction to the poem and is generally considered to be part of the first cantica, bringing the total number of cantos to 100. It is generally accepted, however, that the first two cantos serve as a unitary prologue to the entire epic, as well as the opening two cantos of each cantica serving as a prologue to each of the three cantiche.^[9]^[10]^[11] The number three is prominent in the work, represented here by the length of each cantica. The verse scheme used, terza rima, is hendecasyllabic (lines of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ....

The poem is written in the first person, and tells of Dante's journey through the three realms of the dead, lasting from the night before Good Friday to the Wednesday after Easter in the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory; Beatrice, Dante's ideal woman, guides him through Heaven. Beatrice was a Florentine woman whom he had met in childhood and admired from afar in the mode of the then-fashionable courtly love tradition which is highlighted in Dante's earlier work La Vita Nuova.

The structure of the three realms follows a common numerical pattern of 9 plus 1 for a total of 10: 9 circles of the Inferno, followed by Lucifer contained at its bottom; 9 rings of Mount Purgatory, followed by the Garden of Eden crowning its summit; and the 9 celestial bodies of Paradiso, followed by the Empyrean containing the very essence of God. Within the 9, 7 correspond to a specific moral scheme, subdividing itself into three subcategories, while two others of more particularity are added on for a completion of nine. For example, the seven deadly sins of the Catholic Church that are cleansed in Purgatory are joined by special realms for the Late repentant and the excommunicated by the church. The core seven sins within purgatory correspond to a moral scheme of love perverted, subdivided into three groups corresponding to excessive love (Lust, Gluttony, Greed), deficient love (Sloth), and malicious love (Wrath, Envy, Pride).

In central Italy's political struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines, Dante was part of the Guelphs, who in general favored the Papacy over the Holy Roman Emperor. Florence's Guelphs split into factions around 1300, the White Guelphs, and the Black Guelphs. Dante was among the White Guelphs who were exiled in 1302 by the Lord-Mayor Cante de' Gabrielli di Gubbio, after troops under Charles of Valois entered the city, at the request of Pope Boniface VIII, who supported the Black Guelphs. This exile, which lasted the rest of Dante's life, shows its influence in many parts of the Comedy, from prophecies of Dante's exile to Dante's views of politics to the eternal damnation of some of his opponents.^{[citation needed]}

In Hell and Purgatory, Dante shares in the sin and the penitence respectively. The last word in each of the three parts of the Divine Comedy is stelle, "stars."

[edit] Inferno

Gustave Doré's engravings illustrated the Divine Comedy (1861–1868); here Charon comes to ferry souls across the river Acheron to Hell.

Main article: Inferno (Dante)

The poem begins on the night before Good Friday in the year 1300, "halfway along our life's path" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita). Dante is thirty-five years old, half of the biblical life expectancy of 70 (Psalms 90:10), lost in a dark wood (understood as sin^[12]^[13]^[14]), assailed by beasts (a lion, a leopard, and a she-wolf) he cannot evade, and unable to find the "straight way" (diritta via) – also translatable as "right way" – to salvation (symbolized by the sun behind the mountain). Conscious that he is ruining himself and that he is falling into a "deep place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent ('l sol tace), Dante is at last rescued by Virgil, and the two of them begin their journey to the underworld. Each sin's punishment in Inferno is a contrapasso, a symbolic instance of poetic justice; for example, fortune-tellers have to walk with their heads on backwards, unable to see what is ahead, because that was what they had tried to do in life:

they had their faces twisted toward their haunches
and found it necessary to walk backward,
because they could not see ahead of them.
... and since he wanted so to see ahead,
he looks behind and walks a backward path.^[15]

Allegorically, the Inferno represents the Christian soul seeing sin for what it really is, and the three beasts represent three types of sin: the self-indulgent, the violent, and the malicious.^[16] These three types of sin also provide the three main divisions of Dante's Hell: Upper Hell, beyond the city of Dis, containing four indulgent sins (Lust, gluttony, avarice, anger); Circle 7 for the sins of violence, and Circles 8 and 9 for the sins of malice (fraud and treachery). Added onto these are two unlike categories that are specifically spiritual: Limbo, within Circle 1, contains the virtuous pagans who were not sinful but were ignorant of Christ; and Circle 6, containing the heretics who contradicted the doctrine and confused the spirit of Christ. The circles are put to 9, with the addition of the Satan completing the structure of 9 + 1 = 10.^[17]

Dante gazes at Mount Purgatory in an allegorical portrait by Agnolo Bronzino, painted c. 1530

[edit] Purgatorio

Main article: Purgatorio

Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom, to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world. The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere, created by the displacement of rock which resulted when Satan's fall created Hell^[18] (which Dante portrays as existing underneath Jerusalem^[19]). The mountain has seven terraces, corresponding to the seven deadly sins or "seven roots of sinfulness."^[20] The classification of sin here is more psychological than that of the Inferno, being based on motives, rather than actions. It is also drawn primarily from Christian theology, rather than from classical sources.^[21] However, Dante's illustrative examples of sin and virtue draw on classical sources as well as on the Bible and on contemporary events. The seven deadly sins correspond to a threefold scheme of improper love: excessive love, or love of the things that are secondary to divinity (Lust, Gluttony, Greed); deficient love, or the lacking in a desire to achieve divinity (Sloth), and malicious love, or love of malignant things that should grieve man and which are contrary to divinity (Wrath, Envy, Pride). Below the seven purges of the soul is the Ante-Purgatory, containing the Excommunicated from the church and the Late repentant who died, often violently, before receiving rites. Thus the total comes to 9, with the addition of the Garden of Eden at the summit, equaling 10.^[22]

Allegorically, the Purgatorio represents the Christian life. Christian souls arrive escorted by an angel, singing in exitu Israel de Aegypto. In his Letter to Cangrande, Dante explains that this reference to Israel leaving Egypt refers both to the redemption of Christ and to "the conversion of the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to the state of grace."^[23] Appropriately, therefore, it is Easter Sunday when Dante and Virgil arrive.

The Purgatorio is notable for demonstrating the medieval knowledge of a spherical Earth. During the poem, Dante discusses the different stars visible in the southern hemisphere, the altered position of the sun, and the various timezones of the Earth. At this stage it is, Dante says, sunset at Jerusalem, midnight on the River Ganges, and sunrise in Purgatory.

[edit] Paradiso

Main article: Paradiso (Dante)

Dante and Beatrice speak to Piccarda and Constance of Sicily, in a fresco by Philipp Veit, Paradiso, Canto 3.

After an initial ascension, Beatrice guides Dante through the nine celestial spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, as in Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology. While the structures of the Inferno and Purgatorio were based on different classifications of sin, the structure of the Paradiso is based on the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues.

The first seven spheres of Heaven deal solely with the cardinal virtues of Prudence, Fortitude, Justice and Temperance. The first three describe a deficiency of one of the cardinal virtues — the Moon, containing the inconstant whose vows to God waned as the moon thus lack fortitude; Mercury, containing the ambitious who were virtuous for glory and thus lacked justice; and Venus, containing the lovers, whose love was directed toward another than God and thus lacked Temperance. The final four incidentally are positive examples of the cardinal virtues, all led on by the Sun, containing the prudent, whose wisdom lighted the way for the other virtues, to which the others are bound (constituting a category on its own). Mars contains the men of fortitude who died in the cause of Christianity; Jupiter contains the kings of Justice; and Saturn contains the temperant, the monks who abided to the contemplative lifestyle. The seven subdivided into three are raised further by two more categories: the eighth sphere of the fixed stars that contain those who achieved the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, and represent the Church Triumphant — the total perfection of man, cleansed of all the sins and carrying all the virtues of heaven; and the ninth circle, or Primum Mobile (corresponding to Medieval astronomy of Geocentricism) which contains the angels, creatures never poisoned by original sin. Topping them all is the Empyrean that contains the essence of God, completing the 9 fold division to 10.

Dante meets and converses with several great saints of the Church, including Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Saint Peter, and St. John. The Paradiso is consequently more theological in nature than the Inferno and the Purgatorio. However, Dante admits the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see, and the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal one.

The Divine Comedy finishes with Dante seeing the Triune God. In a flash of understanding, which he cannot express, Dante finally understands the mystery of Christ's divinity and humanity, and his soul becomes aligned with God's love:^[24]

But already my desire and my will
were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,
by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars.^[25]

Earliest manuscripts [link]

First printed edition, 11 April 1472

According to the Italian Dante Society, no original manuscript written by Dante has survived, although there are many manuscript copies from the 14th and 15th centuries – more than 825 are listed on their site.^[26] The oldest belongs to the 1330s, almost a decade after Dante's death. The most precious ones are the three full copies made by Giovanni Boccaccio (1360s), who himself did not have the original manuscript as a source.^{[citation needed]} The first printed edition was published in Foligno, Italy, by Johann Numeister and Evangelista Angelini da Trevi on 11 April 1472.^[27] Of the 300 copies printed, fourteen still survive. The original printing press is on display in the Oratorio della Nunziatella in Foligno.

Thematic concerns [link]

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternative meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem – see the Letter to Cangrande^[28] – he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory: the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical.

The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines, which are related to the Trinity. The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of the Inferno, allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."^[29]

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" was added later in the 14th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy").^{[citation needed]} Low poems had happy endings and were written in everyday language, whereas High poems treated more serious matters and were written in an elevated style. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of Man, in the low and "vulgar" Italian language and not the Latin one might expect for such a serious topic. Boccaccio's account that an early version of the poem was begun by Dante in Latin is still controversial.^[30]^[31]

Dante's personal involvement [link]

In his allegorical description of sin (in the Inferno) and virtue (in the Purgatorio and Paradiso), Dante draws on real characters from ancient Greek and Roman myths and history, and from his own times. However, his own actions often also illustrate the concepts he is discussing. For example, Dante shares the fleshly sins of the damned at several points in the upper circles of Hell. At the first circle where the virtuous pagans who pursued honor above all else are punished by eternally knowing they have fallen short for their lack of faith, Dante shares with them their love of honor, as evidenced by the word "honor" being used repeatedly in the Canto.^[32] Similarly, at the third circle where Ciacco and other gluttons are punished for their appetites, Dante's appetite for political information about his fellow Florentines appears equally gluttonous:

And I to him: I wish thee still to teach me,
And make a gift to me of further speech.

Farinata and Tegghiaio, once so worthy,
Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, and Mosca,
And others who on good deeds set their thoughts,

Say where they are, and cause that I may know them;
For great desire constraineth me to learn
If Heaven doth sweeten them, or Hell envenom.^[33]

Conversely, in the Purgatorio, after leaving the terrace of the proud, Dante has learned from the example set by Omberto^[34] and suppresses his own pride, declining to speak of his achievements:

And I: Through midst of Tuscany there wanders
A streamlet that is born in Falterona,
And not a hundred miles of course suffice it;

From thereupon do I this body bring.
To tell you who I am were speech in vain,
Because my name as yet makes no great noise."^[35]

Scientific themes [link]

Albert Ritter sketched the Comedy's geography from Dante's Cantos: Hell's entrance is near Florence with the circles descending to Earth's centre; sketch 5 reflects Canto 34's inversion as Dante passes down, and thereby up to Mount Purgatory's shores in the southern hemisphere, where he passes to the first sphere of Heaven at the top.

Although the Divine Comedy is primarily a religious poem, discussing sin, virtue, and theology, Dante also discusses several elements of the science of his day (this mixture of science with poetry has received both praise and blame over the centuries^[36]). The Purgatorio repeatedly refers to the implications of a spherical Earth, such as the different stars visible in the southern hemisphere, the altered position of the sun, and the various timezones of the Earth. For example, at sunset in Purgatory it is midnight at the Ebro (a river in Spain), dawn in Jerusalem, and noon on the River Ganges:^[37]

Just as, there where its Maker shed His blood,

the sun shed its first rays, and Ebro lay

beneath high Libra, and the ninth hour's rays

were scorching Ganges' waves; so here, the sun

stood at the point of day's departure when

God's angel—happy—showed himself to us.^[38]

Dante travels through the centre of the Earth in the Inferno, and comments on the resulting change in the direction of gravity in Canto XXXIV (lines 76–120). A little earlier (XXXIII, 102–105), he queries the existence of wind in the frozen inner circle of hell, since it has no temperature differentials.^[39]

Inevitably, given its setting, the Paradiso discusses astronomy extensively, but in the Ptolemaic sense. The Paradiso also discusses the importance of the experimental method in science, with a detailed example in lines 94–105 of Canto II:

Yet an experiment, were you to try it,

could free you from your cavil and the source

of your arts' course springs from experiment.

Taking three mirrors, place a pair of them

at equal distance from you; set the third

midway between those two, but farther back.

Then, turning toward them, at your back have placed

a light that kindles those three mirrors and

returns to you, reflected by them all.

Although the image in the farthest glass

will be of lesser size, there you will see

that it must match the brightness of the rest.^[40]

A briefer example occurs in Canto XV of the Purgatorio (lines 16–21), where Dante points out that both theory and experiment confirm that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. Other references to science in the Paradiso include descriptions of clockwork in Canto XXIV (lines 13–18), and Thales' theorem about triangles in Canto XIII (lines 101–102).

Galileo Galilei is known to have lectured on the Inferno, and it has been suggested that the poem may have influenced some of Galileo's own ideas regarding mechanics.^[41]

Islamic philosophy [link]

In 1919, Professor Miguel Asín Palacios, a Spanish scholar and a Catholic priest, published La Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia ("Islamic Eschatology in the Divine Comedy"), an account of parallels between early Islamic philosophy and the Divine Comedy. Palacios argued that Dante derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter from the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi and from the Isra and Mi'raj or night journey of Muhammad to heaven. The latter is described in the Hadith and the Kitab al Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before^[42] as Liber Scalae Machometi, "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder"), and has some slight similarities to the Paradiso, such as a sevenfold division of Paradise,^[43] although this is not unique to the Kitab al Miraj.

Some "superficial similarities"^[44] of the Divine Comedy to the Resalat Al-Ghufran or Epistle of Forgiveness of Al-Ma'arri have also been mentioned in this debate. The Resalat Al-Ghufran describes the journey of the poet in the realms of the afterlife and includes dialogue with people in Heaven and Hell, although, unlike the Kitab al Miraj, there is little description of these locations,^[45] and it is unlikely that Dante borrowed from this work.^[46]^[47]

Dante did, however, live in a Europe of substantial literary and philosophical contact with the Muslim world, encouraged by such factors as Averroism ("Averrois, che'l gran comento feo" Commedia, Inferno, IV, 144, meaning "Averrois, who wrote the great comment") and the patronage of Alfonso X of Castile. Of the twelve wise men Dante meets in Canto X of the Paradiso, Thomas Aquinas and, even more so, Siger of Brabant were strongly influenced by Arabic commentators on Aristotle.^[48] Medieval Christian mysticism also shared the Neoplatonic influence of Sufis such as Ibn Arabi. Philosopher Frederick Copleston argued in 1950 that Dante's respectful treatment of Averroes, Avicenna, and Siger of Brabant indicates his acknowledgement of a "considerable debt" to Islamic philosophy.^[48]

Although this philosophical influence is generally acknowledged, many scholars have not been satisfied that Dante was influenced by the Kitab al Miraj. The 20th century Orientalist Francesco Gabrieli expressed skepticism regarding the claimed similarities, and the lack of evidence of a vehicle through which it could have been transmitted to Dante. Even so, while dismissing the probability of some influences posited in Palacios' work,^[49] Gabrieli conceded that it was "at least possible, if not probable, that Dante may have known the Liber scalae and have taken from it certain images and concepts of Muslim eschatology". Shortly before her death, the Italian philologist Maria Corti pointed out that, during his stay at the court of Alfonso X, Dante's mentor Brunetto Latini met Bonaventura de Siena, a Tuscan who had translated the Kitab al Miraj from Arabic into Latin. Corti speculates that Brunetto may have provided a copy of that work to Dante.^[50] René Guenon, in The Esoterism of Dante, rejected the influence of Ibn Arabi (direct or indirect) on Dante.^[51]

Literary influence in the English-speaking world and beyond [link]

The work was not always so well regarded. After being recognized as a masterpiece in the centuries immediately following its publication,^[52] the work was largely ignored during the Enlightenment, with some notable exceptions such as Vittorio Alfieri; Antoine de Rivarol, who translated the Inferno into French; and Giambattista Vico, who in the Scienza nuova and in the Giudizio su Dante inaugurated what would later become the romantic reappraisal of Dante, juxtaposing him to Homer.^[53] The Comedy was "rediscovered" by William Blake – who illustrated several passages of the epic – and the romantic writers of the 19th century. Later authors such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, C. S. Lewis and James Joyce have drawn on it for inspiration. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was its first American translator,^[54] and modern poets, including Seamus Heaney,^[55] Robert Pinsky, John Ciardi, W. S. Merwin, and Stanley Lombardo, have also produced translations of all or parts of the book. In Russia, beyond Pushkin's memorable translation of a few tercets,^[56] Osip Mandelstam's late poetry has been said to bear the mark of a "tormented meditation" on the Comedy.^[57] In 1934 Mandelstam gave a modern reading of the poem in his labyrinthine "Conversation on Dante".^[58] Mikhail Lozinsky's translation of the poem, completed in 1945, is considered to be one of the greatest works of Russian poetry in the 20th century and arguably the best translation of any foreign-language poem into Russian ever.

New English translations of the Divine Comedy continue to be published regularly. Notable English translations of the complete poem include the following.

Year	Translator	Notes
1805–1814	Henry Francis Cary	An older translation, widely available online.
1867	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow	The first U.S. translation, raising American interest in the poem. It is still widely read, including online.
1891–1892	Charles Eliot Norton	Translation used by Great Books of the Western World. Available online at Project Gutenberg.
1933–1943	Laurence Binyon	An English version rendered in terza rima, with some advisory assistance from Ezra Pound
1949–1962	Dorothy L. Sayers	Translated for Penguin Classics, intended for a wider audience, and completed by Barbara Reynolds.
1954–1970	John Ciardi	His Inferno was recorded and released by Folkways Records in 1954.
1981	C. H. Sisson	Available in Oxford World's Classics.
1980–1984	Allen Mandelbaum	Available online.
1967–2002	Mark Musa	An alternative Penguin Classics version.
2000–2007	Robert and Jean Hollander	Online as part of the Princeton Dante Project.
2002–2004	Anthony M. Esolen	Modern Library Classics edition.
2006–2007	Robin Kirkpatrick	A third Penguin Classics version, replacing Musa's.
2010	Burton Raffel	A Northwestern World Classics version.

A number of other translators, such as Robert Pinsky, have translated the Inferno only.

In the arts [link]

Rodin's The Kiss represents Paolo and Francesca from the Inferno.^[59]

Main article: Dante and his Divine Comedy in popular culture

The Divine Comedy has been a source of inspiration for countless artists for almost seven centuries. There are many references to Dante's work in literature. In music, Franz Liszt was one of many composers to write works based on the Divine Comedy. In sculpture, the work of Auguste Rodin is notable for themes from Dante, and many visual artists have illustrated Dante's work, as shown by the examples above. There have also been many references to the Divine Comedy in cinema and computer games.

Footnotes [link]

^ For example, Encyclopedia Americana, 2006, Vol. 30‎. p. 605: "the greatest single work of Italian literature;" John Julius Norwich, The Italians: History, Art, and the Genius of a People, Abrams, 1983, p. 27: "his tremendous poem, still after six and a half centuries the supreme work of Italian literature, remains – after the legacy of ancient Rome – the grandest single element in the Italian heritage;" and Robert Reinhold Ergang, The Renaissance, Van Nostrand, 1967, p. 103: "Many literary historians regard the Divine Comedy as the greatest work of Italian literature. In world literature it is ranked as an epic poem of the highest order."
^ Bloom, Harold (1994). The Western Canon. See also Western canon for other "canons" that include the Divine Comedy.
^ See Lepschy, Laura; Lepschy, Giulio (1977). The Italian Language Today. or any other history of Italian language.
^ Peter E. Bondanella, The Inferno, Introduction, p. xliii, Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003, ISBN 1-59308-051-4: "the key fiction of the Divine Comedy is that the poem is true."
^ Dorothy L. Sayers, Hell, notes on page 19.
^ Charles Allen Dinsmore, The Teachings of Dante, Ayer Publishing, 1970, p. 38, ISBN 0-8369-5521-8.
^ The Fordham Monthly Fordham University, Vol. XL, Dec. 1921, p. 76
^ Ronnie H. Terpening, Lodovico Dolce, Renaissance Man of Letters (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1997), p. 166.
^ Dante The Inferno A Verse Translation by Professor Robert and Jean Hollander page 43
^ Epist. XIII 43 to 48
^ Wilkins E.H The Prologue to the Divine Comedy Annual Report of the Dante Society page 1 to 7
^ "Inferno, la Divina Commedia annotata e commentata da Tommaso Di Salvo, Zanichelli, Bologna, 1985". Abebooks.it. http://www.abebooks.it/INFERNO-DIVINA-COMMEDIA-ANNOTATA-COMMENTATA-TOMMASO/590245816/bd. Retrieved 2010-01-16.
^ Lectura Dantis, Società dantesca italiana
^ Online sources include [1], [2], [3][4], [5], [6], and [7]
^ Inferno, Canto XX, lines 13–15 and 38–39, Mandelbaum translation.
^ Dorothy L. Sayers, Purgatory, notes on page 75.
^ Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed, Divine Comedy, "Notes to Dante's Inferno"
^ Inferno, Canto 34, lines 121–126.
^ Richard Lansing and Teodolinda Barolini, The Dante Encyclopedia, p. 475, Garland Publishing, 2000, ISBN 0-8153-1659-3.
^ Dorothy L. Sayers, Purgatory, Introduction, pp. 65–67 (Penguin, 1955).
^ Robin Kirkpatrick, Purgatorio, Introduction, p. xiv (Penguin, 2007).
^ Carlyle-Oakey-Wickstead, Divine Comedy, "Notes on Dante's Purgatory.
^ "The Letter to Can Grande," in Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri, translated and edited by Robert S. Haller (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973), 99
^ Dorothy L. Sayers, Paradise, notes on Canto XXXIII.
^ Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, lines 142–145, C. H. Sisson translation.
^ "Elenco Codici". Danteonline.it. http://www.danteonline.it/english/codici_frames/elencocodici.asp. Retrieved 2009-08-05.
^ Christopher Kleinhenz, Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, Volume 1, Routledge, 2004, ISBN 0-415-93930-5, p. 360.
^ "Epistle to Can Grande". English.udel.edu. http://www.english.udel.edu/dean/cangrand.html. Retrieved 2009-08-05.
^ Dorothy L. Sayers, Hell, Introduction, p. 16 (Penguin, 1955).
^ Boccaccio also quotes the initial triplet:"Ultima regna canam fluvido contermina mundo, / spiritibus quae lata patent, quae premia solvunt /pro meritis cuicumque suis". For translation and more, see Guyda Armstrong, Review of Giovanni Boccaccio. Life of Dante. J. G. Nichols, trans. London: Hesperus Press, 2002.
^ Hiram Peri, The Original Plan of the Divine Comedy, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 18, No. 3/4 (1955), pp. 189–210.
^ Inferno, Canto 4, lines 72, 73, 76, 80, 100, and 133, Mandelbaum translation
^ Inferno, Canto VI, lines 77–84, Longfellow translation.
^ Purgatorio, Canto XI, lines 58–67
^ Purgatorio, Canto XIV, lines 16–21, Longfellow translation.
^ Michael Caesar, Dante: The Critical Heritage, Routledge, 1995, pp 288, 383, 412, 631.
^ Dorothy L. Sayers, Purgatory, notes on p. 286
^ Purgatorio, Canto XXVII, lines 1–6, Mandelbaum translation.
^ Dorothy L. Sayers, Inferno, notes on page 284.
^ Paradiso, Canto II, lines 94–105, Mandelbaum translation.
^ Mtholyoke.edu "Mark Peterson Sheds New Light on Discovery by Galileo," College Street Journal, March 8, 2002. Retrieved 2 April 2009.
^ I. Heullant-Donat and M.-A. Polo de Beaulieu, "Histoire d'une traduction," in Le Livre de l'échelle de Mahomet, Latin edition and French translation by Gisèle Besson and Michèle Brossard-Dandré, Collection Lettres Gothiques, Le Livre de Poche, 1991, p. 22 with note 37.
^ See the English translation of the Kitab al Miraj.
^ William Montgomery Watt and Pierre Cachia, A History of Islamic Spain, 2nd edition, Edinburgh University Press, 1996, pp. 125–126, ISBN 0-7486-0847-8.
^ Dionisius A. Agius and Richard Hitchcock, The Arab Influence in Medieval Europe, Ithaca Press, 1996, p. 70, ISBN 0-86372-213-X.
^ Kāmil Kīlānī and G. Brackenbury, Introduction to Risalat ul Ghufran: A Divine Comedy, 3rd ed, Al-Maaref Printing and Publishing House, 1943, p. 8.
^ The theory "receives little credence", according to Watt and Cachia, p. 183.
^ ^a ^b Frederick Copleston (1950). A History of Philosophy, Volume 2. London: Continuum. p. 200.
^ Francesco Gabrieli, "New light on Dante and Islam", Diogenes, 2:61–73, 1954
^ Maria Corti: Dante e l'Islam (interview)
^ Guenon, René (1925). The Esoterism of Dante.
^ Chaucer wrote in the Monk's Tale, "Redeth the grete poete of Ytaille / That highte Dant, for he kan al devyse / Fro point to point; nat o word wol he faille".
^ Erich Auerbach,Dante: Poet of the Secular World. ISBN 0-226-03205-1.
^ Irmscher, Christoph. Longfellow Redux. University of Illinois, 2008: 11. ISBN 978-0-252-03063-5.
^ Seamus Heaney, "Envies and Identifications: Dante and the Modern Poet." The Poet's Dante: Twentieth-Century Responses. Ed. Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff. New York: Farrar, 2001. 239–258.
^ 'Dante in Russia' in "The Dante encyclopedia" by Richard H. Lansing and Teodolinda Barolini, [8]
^ Marina Glazova, Mandelstam and Dante: The Divine Comedy in Mandelstam's poetry of the 1930s Studies in East European Thought, Volume 28, Number 4, November 1984.
^ James Fenton, Hell set to music, The Guardian, 16 July 2005
^ Le Normand-Romain, Antoinette (1999). Rodin:The Gates of Hell. Paris: Musée Rodin. ISBN 2-901428-69-X.

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Divine Comedy

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Divine Comedy

Princeton Dante Project Website that offers the complete text of the Divine Comedy (and Dante's other works) in Italian and English along with audio accompaniment in both languages. Includes historical and interpretive annotation.
The Comedy in English: trans. Cary (with Doré's illustrations) (zipped HTML downloadable from Project Gutenberg), Cary/Longfellow/Mandelbaum parallel edition, trans. James Finn Cotter
Dante Dartmouth Project: Full text of more than 70 Italian, Latin, and English commentaries on the Commedia, ranging in date from 1322 (Iacopo Alighieri) to the 2000s (Robert Hollander)
On-line Concordance to the Divine Comedy
A Dictionary of the Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante by Paget Toynbee, London, The Clarendon Press (1898).
Online manuscript codices: Phillips 9589
Danteworlds, multimedia presentation of the Divine Comedy for students by Guy Raffa of the University of Texas
World of Dante Multimedia website that offers Italian text of Divine Comedy, Allen Mandelbaum's translation, gallery, interactive maps, timeline, musical recordings, and searchable database for students and teachers by Deborah Parker and IATH (Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities) of the University of Virginia

Audio

Lino Pertile's reading, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.
Audiobooks: Public domain recordings from LibriVox (in Italian (LibriVox), Longfellow translation); some additional recordings
Readings of the complete Italian Divina Commedia in MP3 fomat by Iacopo Vettori

v t e Dante Alighieri

Works in Latin	De vulgari eloquentia · De Monarchia · Eclogues

Works in Italian	La Vita Nuova · Le Rime · Convivio

Divine Comedy	Inferno · Purgatorio · Paradiso "Papé Satàn, papé Satàn aleppe" · "Raphèl maí amèche zabí almi"

Characters and places of Divine Comedy	Alichino · Barbariccia · Ciampolo · Cocytus · Corso Donati · Dis · Eunoe · Forese Donati · Malacoda · Malebranche · Malebolge · Piccarda · Satan · Scarmiglione

Books, articles, concepts	Contrapasso · Cultural references in Divina Commedia · Dante Encyclopedia · Enciclopedia Dantesca

People in Dante's life	Jacopo Alighieri · Guido Cavalcanti · Brunetto Latini · Beatrice Portinari

In popular culture	Dante and his Divine Comedy in popular culture · Après une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata · Dante crater · Dante Park · The Divine Comedy (symphony) · Dante's Inferno (1924 film) · Dante's Inferno (1935 film) · Dante's Inferno (2007 film) · Dante's Inferno (video game) · Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic · Dante Symphony · Demon Lord Dante · L'Inferno (1911 film) · Italian battleship Dante Alighieri

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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

"Divine" redirects here. For other uses, see Divine (disambiguation) or Divinity (disambiguation)

A clay idol, possibly representing the goddess Asherah. Such idols may have been simply representational of the divine, or else regarded as innately divine (cf. polytheism).

In religious terms, divinity refers to things which come from a supernatural power or deity, such as God, and are therefore regarded as sacred and holy.^[1]^[2]^[3] Such things are regarded as "divine" due to their transcendental origins, and/or because their attributes or qualities are superior relative to things of the Earth.^[1] Divine things are regarded as eternal and based in truth,^[1] while material things are regarded as mortal and based in illusion. Such things that may qualify as "divine" are apparitions, visions, prophecies, miracles, and the human soul, or more general things like resurrection, immortality, grace, and salvation. Otherwise what is or is not divine may be loosely defined, as it is used by different belief systems.

The root of the word "divine" is literally "godlike" (from the Latin deus, cf. Dyaus, closely related to Greek zeus, div in Persian and deva in Sanskrit), but the use varies significantly depending on which deity is being discussed. This article outlines the major distinctions in the conventional use of the terms.

For specific related academic terms, see Divinity (academic discipline), or Divine (Anglican).

1 Usages
2 See also
3 Notes and references

Usages [link]

Divinity as a quality has two distinct usages:

Divine force or power - powers or forces that are universal, or transcend human capacities
Divinity applied to mortals - qualities of individuals who are considered to have some special access or relationship to the divine.

Overlap occurs between these usages because deities or godlike entities are often identical with and/or identified by the powers and forces that are credited to them — in many cases a deity is merely a power or force personified — and these powers and forces may then be extended or granted to mortal individuals. For instance, Jehovah is closely associated with storms and thunder throughout much of the Old Testament. He is said to speak in thunder, and thunder is seen as a token of His anger. This power was then extended to prophets like Moses and Samuel, who caused thunderous storms to rain down on their enemies. (See Exodus 9:23 and 1 Samuel 12:18.)

Divinity always carries connotations of goodness, beauty, beneficence, justice, and other positive, pro-social attributes. In monotheistic faiths there is an equivalent cohort of malefic supranormal beings and powers, such as demons, devils, afreet, etc., which are not conventionally referred to as divine; demonic is often used instead. Pantheistic and polytheistic faiths make no such distinction; gods and other beings of transcendent power often have complex, ignoble, or even irrational motivations for their acts. Note that while the terms demon and demonic are used in monotheistic faiths as antonyms to divine, they are in fact derived from the Greek word daimón (δαίμων), which itself translates as divinity.

There are three distinct usages of divinity and divine in religious discourse:

Entity [link]

Main article: Deity

In monotheistic faiths, the word divinity is often used to refer to the singular God central to that faith. Often the word takes the definite article and is capitalized — "the Divinity" — as though it were a proper name or definitive honorific. Divine — capitalized — may be used as an adjective to refer to the manifestations of such a Divinity or its powers: e.g. "basking in the Divine presence..."

The terms divinity and divine — uncapitalized, and lacking the definite article — are sometimes used as to denote 'god(s)^[4] or certain other beings and entities which fall short of godhood but lie outside the human realm. These include (by no means an exhaustive list):

The multiple gods of pan- and polytheistic faiths (as in the ancient Greek and Roman)
Elementals such as the dragons of traditional Chinese religion and sylphs and salamanders from Alchemical traditions
Anthropomorphized aspects of nature, like the tree and river spirits of Roman mythology
Animal beings, many of which populate the stories of Native Americans and Indigenous Australians
Conceptual beings like the Muses and Fates of ancient Greek belief

In certain instances, individual humans are elevated to divine status without becoming actual gods: the eight immortals of taoism, for instance. Compare with the section on divinity and mortals given below.

Divine force or power [link]

As previously noted, divinities are closely related to the transcendent force(s) or power(s) credited to them,^[5] so much so that in some cases the powers or forces may themselves be invoked independently. This leads to the second usage of the word divine (and a less common usage of divinity): to refer to the operation of transcendent power in the world.

In its most direct form, the operation of transcendent power implies some form of divine intervention. For pan- and polytheistic faiths this usually implies the direct action of one god or another on the course of human events. In Greek legend, for instance, it was Poseidon (god of the sea) who raised the storms which blew Odysseus' craft off course on his return journey, and Japanese tradition holds that a god-sent wind saved them from Mongol invasion. Prayers or propitiations are often offered to specific gods of pantheisms to garner favorable interventions in particular enterprises: e.g. safe journeys, success in war, or a season of bountiful crops. Many faiths around the world — from Japanese Shinto and Chinese traditional religion, to certain African practices and the faiths derived from those in the Caribbean, to Native American beliefs — hold that ancestral or household spirits offer daily protection and blessings. In monotheistic religions, divine intervention may take very direct forms: miracles, visions, or intercessions by blessed figures.

Transcendent force or power may also operate through more subtle and indirect paths. Monotheistic faiths generally support some version of divine providence, which acknowledges that the divinity of the faith has a profound but unknowable plan always unfolding in the world. Unforeseeable, overwhelming, or seemingly unjust events are often thrown on 'the will of the Divine', in deferences like the Muslim inshallah ('as God wills it') and Christian 'God works in mysterious ways'. Often such faiths hold out the possibility of divine retribution as well, where the divinity will unexpectedly bring evil-doers to justice through the conventional workings of the world; from the subtle redressing of minor personal wrongs, to such large-scale havoc as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or the biblical Great Flood. Other faiths are even more subtle: the doctrine of karma shared by Buddhism and Hinduism is a divine law similar to divine retribution but without the connotation of punishment: our acts, good or bad, intentional or unintentional, reflect back on us as part of the natural working of the universe. Philosophical Taoism also proposes a transcendent operant principle — transliterated in English as tao or dao, meaning 'the way' — which is neither an entity or a being per se, but reflects the natural ongoing process of the world. Modern western mysticism and new age philosophy often use the term 'the Divine' as a noun in this latter sense: a non-specific principle and/or being that gives rise to the world, and acts as the source or wellspring of life. In these latter cases the faiths do not promote deference, as happens in monotheisms; rather each suggests a path of action that will bring the practitioner into conformance with the divine law: ahimsa — 'no harm' — for Buddhist and Hindu faiths; de or te — 'virtuous action' — in daoism; and any of numerous practices of peace and love in new age thinking.

Mortals [link]

Main article: apotheosis

In the third usage, extensions of divinity and divine power are credited to living, mortal individuals. Political leaders are known to have claimed actual divinity in certain early societies — the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs being the premier case — taking a role as objects of worship and being credited with superhuman status and powers. More commonly, and more pertinent to recent history, leaders merely claim some form of divine mandate, suggesting that their rule is in accordance with the will of God. The doctrine of the divine right of kings was introduced as late as the 17th century, proposing that kings rule by divine decree; Japanese Emperors ruled by divine mandate until the inception of the Japanese constitution after World War II

Less politically, most faiths have any number of people that are believed to have been touched by divine forces: saints, prophets, heroes, oracles, martyrs, and enlightened beings, among others. Saint Francis of Assisi, in Catholicism, is said to have received instruction directly from God and it is believed that he grants plenary indulgence to all who confess their sins and visit his chapel on the appropriate day. In Greek mythology, Achilles' mother bathed him in the river Styx to give him immortality, and Hercules — as the son of Zeus — inherited near-godlike powers. In religious Taoism, Lao Tsu is venerated as a saint with his own powers. Various individuals in the Buddhist faith, beginning with Siddhartha, are considered to be enlightened, and in religious forms of Buddhism they are credited with divine powers. Muhammad and Christ, in their respective traditions, are each said to have performed divine miracles.

In general, mortals with divine qualities are carefully distinguished from the deity or deities in their religion's main pantheon.^[6] Even the Christian faith, which holds Christ to be identical to God, distinguishes between God the father and Christ the begotten son.^[7] There are, however, certain esoteric and mystical schools of thought, present in many faiths — Sufis in Islam, Gnostics in Christianity, Advaitan Hindus, Zen Buddhists, as well as several non-specific perspectives developed in new age philosophy — which hold that all humans are in essence divine, or unified with the Divine in a non-trivial way. Such divinity, in these faiths, would express itself naturally if it were not obscured by the social and physical worlds we live in; it needs to be brought to the fore through appropriate spiritual practices.^[8]

Christianity and New Testament references [link]

In traditional Christian theology, the concept and nature of "divinity" always has its source ultimately from God Himself. It's the state or quality of being divine, "el", "elohim", "theos", or "theias". The Divinity in the Bible is considered the Godhead itself. Or God in general. Or it has reference to a deity.^[9] Even angels are considered "divine" or "elohim", in Scripture. And immortalized born-again believers in Heaven, according to Biblical verses, partake of the "divine nature". (Psalm 8:5; Hebrews 2:9; 2 Peter 1:4) And the term can denote Godlike nature or character.

In the Christian Greek Scriptures of the Bible, the Greek word θεῖον ("theion") in the Douay Version, is translated as "divinity". Examples are below:

Acts 17:29
"Being therefore the offspring of God, we must not suppose the divinity to be like unto gold, or silver, or stone, the graving of art, and device of man."

Romans 1:20
"For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable."

Revelation 5:12
"Saying with a loud voice: The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and benediction."

The word translated either "deity", "Godhead", or "divinity" in the Greek New Testament is also the Greek word θεότητος ("theotētos"), and the one Verse that contains it is this:

Colossians 2:9
"Quia in ipso inhabitat omnis plenitudo divinitatis [divinity] corporaliter." (Vulgate)
"For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (KJV)
"Because it is in him that all the fullness of the divine quality dwells bodily." (NWT)
"For in him all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form." (NET)
"For the full content of divine nature lives in Christ." (TEV)

The word "divine" in the New Testament is the Greek word θείας ("theias"), and is the adjective form of "divinity". Biblical examples from the King James Bible are below:

2 Peter 1:3
"According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue."

2 Peter 1:4
"Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."

Latter-Day Saints [link]

Main article: God in Mormonism

According to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, such spiritual practices are, in and of themselves, inspired by promptings from the light of Christ or the Holy Spirit that are communications with an individual's divine essence or spirit that is linked directly to God through pre-existence as his offspring.

Belief in a divine potential of humankind is taught by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The LDS teaches that there is a pre-mortal stage of human existence, known as pre-existence, during which pre-mortal human spirits, called spirit children, are able to make choices that influence their upcoming fully mortal existence as a direct result of the individual spirit's choices regarding truth, love and faith. Spirit children come into existence out of "intelligences". "Intelligences" are eternal forms of energy or matter existing in a less progressed form than God. (See Joseph Smith's King Follett discourse.)

According to the LDS church, Christ's unwavering ability to obey truth, perceive light, and act in perfect love and faith, distinguishes his pre-mortal existence from the pre-mortal existence of the other spirit beings who were in the presence of the "Eternal Father". Christ's behaviour during his "spirit child" phase serves to explain why he is considered to be God-like. The God-like quality ascribed to Jesus explains why he had a greater capacity to suffer more than mortal man could suffer; thus he could endure the anguish and incomprehensible pain of the atonement.

The LDS belief is that Christ's divinity qualified him to return to the presence of God after his death and resurrection. By means of the atonement and his offering of divine grace to humankind, Christ provided access to divinity for humankind. A divine being is filled with perfect love, and desires to share these qualities because of the joy they bring to each individual soul.

Notes and references [link]

^ ^a ^b ^c Wiktionary: "divine (comparative more divine, superlative most divine) 1) of or pertaining to a god 2) eternal, holy, or otherwise supernatural. 3) of superhuman or surpassing excellence 4) beautiful, heavenly
^ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/divine
^ Merriam Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/divine
^ See, for example "The Great Stag: A Sumerian Divinity" by Bobula Ida (Yearbook of Ancient and Medieval History 1953)
^ note Augustine's argument that divinity is not a quality of God, but that "God is [...] Divinity itself" (Nature and Grace, part I, question 3, article 3) "Whether God is the Same as His Essence or Nature"
^ This is sometimes a controversial issue, however; see [1], for example, for a discussion of the status of the Japanese emperor.
^ See, for example, "The Divinity of Alpha's Jesus" by Peterson & McDonald (Media Spotlight 25:4, 2002)
^ See, for example, "Twelve Signs of Your Awakening Divinity" by Geoffrey Hoppe and Tobias
^ divinity - The Free Dictionary.

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Theologies

Christian	History of Outline of the Bible Terms Christology Cosmology Ecclesiology Ethics Hamartiology Law Messianism Movements Nestorianism New testament Old testament Philosophy Practical Sophiology Soteriology More...

Feminist	Buddhism Christianity Hinduism Islam Judaism Mormonism Goddesses More...

Hindu	Ayyavazhi theology Hindu philosophical concepts Krishnology More...

Islamic	Oneness of God Prophets Holy Scriptures Angels Predestination Last Judgment More...

Jewish	Abrahamic prophecy Angels in Judaism Jewish mysticism

Other	Death of God Exotheology Holocaust Pope Pius XII Process Zoroastrian More...

Education

Seminaries and theological colleges	Anglican Buddhist Eastern Orthodox Evangelical Islamic Jewish Lutheran Madrassas Methodist Reformed Church Roman Catholic More...

Schools by religious affiliation	Bahá'í Buddhist Anglican Assemblies of God Baptist Eastern Orthodox Hindu Islamic Jewish Latter Day Saints Lutheran Mennonite Methodist Nondenominational Christian Presbyterian Quaker Roman Catholic Seventh-Day Adventist

Resources

Practitioners

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	Book: Divine Comedy
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Branches of Mathematics

Pure mathematics

Applied mathematics

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Contents

[edit] Inferno

[edit] Purgatorio

[edit] Paradiso

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