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A review by jklbookdragon
The Divine Comedy: Volume 3: Paradise by Dante Alighieri
1.0
I finally made it through the whole thing! I think the main problem that I had with this book - beyond its cloying, fawning lack of anything really happening - was that coming from a 21st century perspective I recognize how such a major work (You *know* it's a major work from a major author because of how often he tells you that it is!) must have influenced the ideas of the Dark Ages. Things like:
Victim blaming ... she took vows of celibacy when she became a nun. But she was kidnapped from the convent and raped, so she's a vow-breaker.
Ptolemaic view of the universe ... the music of the spheres etc.
Anti-Muslim sentiment ... yeah, the leaders of the Crusades feature prominently in Paradiso.
Anti-Semitism ... Jerusalem deserved to be destroyed because the Jews killed Jesus?
And frankly, I don't care AT ALL about the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. And reading a great deal about them didn't change that in the slightest.
If the version I'd been reading had the original Italian like Inferno did, I might have been able to appreciate the beauty of Dante's poetry, but it didn't.
0.1 stars.
Victim blaming ... she took vows of celibacy when she became a nun. But she was kidnapped from the convent and raped, so she's a vow-breaker.
Ptolemaic view of the universe ... the music of the spheres etc.
Anti-Muslim sentiment ... yeah, the leaders of the Crusades feature prominently in Paradiso.
Anti-Semitism ... Jerusalem deserved to be destroyed because the Jews killed Jesus?
And frankly, I don't care AT ALL about the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. And reading a great deal about them didn't change that in the slightest.
If the version I'd been reading had the original Italian like Inferno did, I might have been able to appreciate the beauty of Dante's poetry, but it didn't.
0.1 stars.