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devannm 's review for:
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno
by Dante Alighieri
actual rating: 2.5
Definitely some interesting stuff in here although I am apparently just entirely incapable of comprehending any of it as I'm reading. I'm going to try to maybe listen to an audio recording as I'm reading for the next bit and see if that helps but between the language itself and also how much of it is just references to medieval Italian politics [which I know absolutely nothing about] I was so confused. Luckily I found a really good podcast to listen to that goes through and explains the whole thing canto by canto which was incredibly helpful. I think that really the most interesting part of the whole thing is to see who he decides to put in hell and for what reason so I'm interested to see who ends up in purgatory and heaven because sometimes his choices seem entirely random to me. Not my favorite classic by any means because I feel like it's hard to pull subversive readings out of it [unlike with something like Paradise Lost] but I'm definitely going to try to press on and finish it.
[edit 10/21/21: Ok so I lied, I don't think I'm going to read the other two parts because I just feel like if any part was going to be interesting to me it would have been this one and it just fell largely flat. Might come back to it several years down the road but as of now I'm taking it off my TBR]
Definitely some interesting stuff in here although I am apparently just entirely incapable of comprehending any of it as I'm reading. I'm going to try to maybe listen to an audio recording as I'm reading for the next bit and see if that helps but between the language itself and also how much of it is just references to medieval Italian politics [which I know absolutely nothing about] I was so confused. Luckily I found a really good podcast to listen to that goes through and explains the whole thing canto by canto which was incredibly helpful. I think that really the most interesting part of the whole thing is to see who he decides to put in hell and for what reason so I'm interested to see who ends up in purgatory and heaven because sometimes his choices seem entirely random to me. Not my favorite classic by any means because I feel like it's hard to pull subversive readings out of it [unlike with something like Paradise Lost] but I'm definitely going to try to press on and finish it.
[edit 10/21/21: Ok so I lied, I don't think I'm going to read the other two parts because I just feel like if any part was going to be interesting to me it would have been this one and it just fell largely flat. Might come back to it several years down the road but as of now I'm taking it off my TBR]