runekeon 's review for:

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

1.0

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I found this book very hard to concentrate on, so expect that I missed much. I think this difficulty for two reasons. First, it is an English translation of 14th-century Italian poetry. Second, the many references to people and places are probably timely for medieval Italy, but I had no clue about more than half of them. Even with these issues, I did note some of the common themes of all Christian literature. It seems every Christian work must threaten you with the horrible punishment you will suffer if you don't believe what the author does, but fear-mongering does nothing to convince a rational person. Much of it came off as a political hatchet job against the influential that Dante didn't like and then changed to name dropping of those he did. I'm guessing most if not all of the people named were dead when he wrote this, or maybe he knew he was dying, and they would not be able to seek vengeance. I did notice a passage that appeared to be the source or at least an advertisement of the idea that darker skin is a punishment of sin. This trope has caused lots of suffering and was used to justify slavery. Unfortunately, it survives today in modern Evangelical and Mormon circles.
I will probably look for some commentaries to learn more about what I missed, but I would not expect more understanding of the meaning to make it a nobler work.