The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Volume 2: Purgatorio

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Oxford University Press, 2003 M04 17 - 720 pages
In the early 1300s, Dante Alighieri set out to write the three volumes which make the up The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio is the second volume in this set and opens with Dante the poet picturing Dante the pilgrim coming out of the pit of hell. Similar to the Inferno (34 cantos), this volume is divided into 33 cantos, written in tercets (groups of 3 lines). The English prose is arranged in tercets to facilitate easy correspondence to the verse form of the Italian on the facing page, enabling the reader to follow both languages line by line. In an effort to capture the peculiarities of Dante's original language, this translation strives toward the literal and sheds new light on the shape of the poem. Again the text of Purgatorio follows Petrocchi's La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata, but the editor has departed from Petrocchi's readings in a number of cases, somewhat larger than in the previous Inferno, not without consideration of recent critical readings of the Comedy by scholars such as Lanza (1995, 1997) and Sanguineti (2001). As before, Petrocchi's punctuation has been lightened and American norms have been followed. However, without any pretensions to being "critical", the text presented here is electic and being not persuaded of the exclusive authority of any manuscript, the editor has felt free to adopt readings from various branches of the stemma. One major addition to this second volume is in the notes, where is found the Intercantica - a section for each canto that discusses its relation to the Inferno and which will make it easier for the reader to relate the different parts of the Comedy as a whole.
 

Contents

Introduction
3
PURGATORIO
17
CANTO 1
18
CANTO 2
34
CANTO 3
48
CANTO 4
64
CANTO 5
78
CANTO 6
92
CANTO 22
362
CANTO 23
382
CANTO 24
400
CANTO 25
420
CANTO 26
438
CANTO 27
456
CANTO 28
474
CANTO 29
492

CANTO 7
110
CANTO 8
126
CANTO 9
142
CANTO 10
158
CANTO 11
172
CANTO 12
188
CANTO 13
204
CANTO 14
222
CANTO 15
242
CANTO 16
258
CANTO 17
276
CANTO 18
292
CANTO 19
308
CANTO 20
326
CANTO 21
346
CANTO 30
510
CANTO 31
530
CANTO 32
548
CANTO 33
566
VERGIL ECLOGUE IV
584
GUIDO CAVALCANTIS PASTORELLA
588
ADDITIONAL NOTES
591
Textual Variants
627
Bibliography
631
Index of Italian Latin and Other Foreign Words Discussed in the Notes
657
Index of Passages Cited in the Notes
661
Index of Proper Names in the Notes
676
Index of Proper Names in the Text and Translation
699
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About the author (2003)

Robert M. Durling is Professor Emeritus of English and Italian Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ronald L. Martinez is Professor of Italian at Brown University. Their works together include Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio and Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante's "Rime petrose." Robert Turner has been a professional illustrator for thirty years.

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