Lectura Dantis Inferno A Canto-by-Canto Commentary [Paperback]

The California Lectura Dantis is the long-awaited companion to the three-volume verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum of Dante'sDivine Comedy. Mandelbaum's translation, with facing original text and with illustrations by Barry Moser, has been praised by Robert Fagles as exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths, and by the late James Merrill as lucid and strong . . . with rich orchestration . . . overall sweep and felicity . . . and countless free, brilliant, utterly Dantesque strokes. Charles Simic called the work a miracle. A lesson in the art of translation and a model (an encyclopedia) for poets. The full range and richness of American English is displayed as perhaps never before.

This collection of commentaries on the first part of theComedyconsists of commissioned essays, one for each canto, by a distinguished group of international scholar-critics. Readers of Dante will find thisInfernovolume an enlightening and indispensable guide, the kind of lucid commentary that is truly adapted to the general reader as well as the student and scholar.

Anthony Oldcorn, Professor and Chair of Italian Studies at Brown University, andCharles Ross, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Purdue University, have joined with National Book Award winnerAllen Mandelbaum, who is W.R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University and Professor of the History of Literary Criticism at the University of Turin, as General Editors of the California Lectura Dantis.

CONTRIBUTORS:
John Ahern
Teodolinda Barolini
Philip R. Berk
Giuliana Carugati
Letterio Cassata
Remo Ceserani
Paolo Cherchi
Caron Ann Cioffi
Charles T. Davis
Dante Della Terza
Robert M. Durling
Steve Ellis
Joan M. Ferrante
Eugenio N. Frongia
Robert Hollander
Amilcare A.l“I