The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri

Hell, Purgatory, Paradise: The Harvard Classics

Plot

Henry Francis Cary (December 6, 1772 – August 14, 1844) was a British author and translator, best known for his blank verse translation of The Divine Comedy of Dante. At Oxford he devoted much time to the study of French and Italian literature; the fruits of these studies appeared in the notes to his classic translation of Dante. The version of the Inferno was published in 1805 together with the original text. His version of the whole Divina Commedia did not appear till 1814. It was published at Cary's own expense, as the publisher refused to undertake the risk, owing to the failure incurred over the Inferno. The translation was brought to the notice of Samuel Rogers by Thomas Moore. Rogers made some additions to an article on it by Ugo Foscolo in the Edinburgh Review. This article, and praise bestowed on the work by Coleridge in a lecture at the Royal Institution, led to a general acknowledgment of its merit. Cary's Dante thus gradually took its place among standard works, passing through four editions in the translator's lifetime. It has the great merits of accuracy, idiomatic vigour and readability; it preserves the sincerity and vividness of the original; and, although many rivals have since appeared in the field, it still holds an honourable place.
The Divine Comedy (Italian: La Divina Commedia), written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian 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 Italian standard. It is divided into three parts, the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.