The Paradiso (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) - Softcover

Alighieri, Dante

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593083173 ISBN 13: 9781593083175

Publisher: Sterling Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

The Paradiso, by Dante Alighieri, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

• New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
• Footnotes and endnotes
• Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
• Comments by other famous authors
• Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
• Bibliographies for further reading
• Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences biographical, historical, and literary to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

Dante’s Paradiso, often thrown into shadow by the first two parts of The Divine Comedy, features one of the most sublime, luminous, and exciting visions in all of literature that of Heaven itself.

Having climbed the mountain of Purgatory, Dante begins to ascend to the heights of the universe with his beloved Beatrice as guide. They soar through the nine spheres of heaven the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the stars, and the Prime Mover. Along the way Dante meets people he knew on Earth, who now appear as dazzling jewels, and many others whom he had always wanted to meet, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Saint Bonaventure, and his great-great-grandfather. Finally, Dante reaches Heaven, where incredibly beautiful scenes brilliant lights and colors, and flowering gardens unfold before his eyes, always accompanied by celestial music. Heaven, he learns, is not a place of boring rest, but one of joyful activity, dancing and singing, and endless movement and surprises.

A poem of true heroic fulfillment, Paradiso stands as literature’s greatest hymn to the glory of God.

Peter Bondanella is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at Indiana University. Julia Conaway Bondanella is Professor of Italian at Indiana University. Both have translated works from Italian and have published extensively on Italian culture and art.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The last great literary work of the Middle Ages and the first important book of the Renaissance, Dante's Divine Comedy culminates in this third and final section, Paradiso. The fourteenth-century allegory portrays a medieval perspective on the afterlife, tracing the poet's voyage across three realms—Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise—to investigate the concepts of sin, guilt, and redemption. Expressed in sublime verse, the trilogy concludes with this challenging and rewarding venture into the dwelling place of God, angels, and the souls of the faithful.
Guided by Beatrice, the incarnation of beatific love, Dante undergoes an intellectual journey from doubt to faith. Beatrice instructs the poet in scholastic theology as they pass through the nine spheres of Paradise to the Empyrean, a realm of pure light in which the redeemed experience the bliss of God's immediate presence. This edition features the renowned translation by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and serves as a companion volume to the Dover editions of Inferno and Purgatorio.
www.doverpublications.com

About the Author:

Peter Bondanella is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at Indiana University. Julia Conaway Bondanella is Professor of Italian at Indiana University. Both have translated works from Italian and have published extensively on Italian culture and art.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sterling Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1593083173
• ISBN 13: 9781593083175
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448
• Illustrator: Dore Gustave