"
Whatever be the reason of our interest in Dante, the study of his Divine
Comedy will ever be both a discipline "not so much to elevate our
thoughts," says Coleridge, "as to send them down deeper," and a delight
calling forth the deepest emotions of our being.
JOHN H. FINLEY.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Dante and His Time 1
Dante, The Man 49
Dante's Inferno 101
Dante's Purgatorio 151
Dante's Paradiso 219
DANTE AND HIS TIME
DANTE AND HIS TIME
To know Dante we must know the age which produced Christianity's
greatest poet, he whom Ruskin calls "the central man of all the world,
as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral and
intellectual faculties, all at their highest." Other writers are not so
dependent upon their times for our clear understanding of their books.
Dante to be intelligible to the modern mind, cannot be taken out of the
thirteenth century. "Its contemporary history and its contemporary
spirit" says Brother Azarias in his Phases of Thought and Criticism,
"constitute his clearest and best commentary." Only in the light of this
commentary can we hope to know his message and realize its supremacy.
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