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ntrodebe 's review for:
The Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri
I wish I would have picked a different translation for my first read through. While this edition had nice pretty pictures to help visualize what Dante was describing (especially interesting for Inferno), Longfellow was a bit dense to read. It sounds like he was attempted to capture the prose, rather than the 'plot', of the Divine Comedy, so it had lots of high English and was generally dense.
That being said, Inferno lived up to expectations. Purgatorio was alright, and Paradiso was a slog. Paradiso seemed to be essentially a drawn out treatise on Dante's theological views, and was one of the most obfuscating pieces I've read.
In general, I feel I would have benefitted from reading this in a class:course to get a bit more historical context. The entire trilogy was ripe with early 14th century Florentine pop culture references. While it was easy to pick up his disdain for whoever the pope was at the time, more background information may have allowed for a bit more immersion.
That being said, Inferno lived up to expectations. Purgatorio was alright, and Paradiso was a slog. Paradiso seemed to be essentially a drawn out treatise on Dante's theological views, and was one of the most obfuscating pieces I've read.
In general, I feel I would have benefitted from reading this in a class:course to get a bit more historical context. The entire trilogy was ripe with early 14th century Florentine pop culture references. While it was easy to pick up his disdain for whoever the pope was at the time, more background information may have allowed for a bit more immersion.