inferno · dante

Dante's Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy begun around 1308, takes the poet, guided by Virgil, down through nine circles of hell where each sin is punished by its own logic. It is a moral map of the medieval world, a settling of political scores, and an anatomy of how a soul loses itself, written in the vernacular that made Italian a literary language.

Dante, Inferno, translated by Anthony Esolen (Modern Library, 2002). Read in full over two sessions, Sophomore Fall at Torrey Honors.