Need help? Click here 0800 141 2210 UK FREEPHONE We ship worldwide
The second volume of Oxford's new "Divine Comedy" presents the Italian text of the "Purgatorio" and, on facing pages, a new prose translation. Continuing the story of the poet's journey through the medieval Other World under the guidance of the Roman poet Virgil, the "Purgatorio" culminates in the regaining of the Garden of Eden and the reunion there with the poet's long-lost love Beatrice. This new edition of the Italian text takes recent critical editions into account, and Durling's prose translation, like that of the "Inferno", is unprecedented in its accuracy, eloquence, and closeness to Dante's syntax. Martinez' and Durling's notes are designed for the first-time reader of the poem but include a wealth of new material unavailable elsewhere. The extensive notes on each canto include innovative sections sketching the close relation to passages-often similarly numbered cantos - in the "Inferno". Fifteen short essays explore special topics and controversial issues, including Dante's debts to Virgil and Ovid, his radical political views, his original conceptions of homosexuality, of moral growth, and of eschatology. As in the "Inferno", there is an extensive bibliography and four useful indexes. Robert Turner's illustrations include maps, diagrams of Purgatory and the cosmos, and line drawings of objects and places mentioned in the poem.
Robert M. Durling is Professor Emeritus of Italian and English Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His translation of Petrarch's Lyric Poetry (1976) has been widely acclaimed. Ronald L. Martinez is co-author, with Durling, of Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante's 'Rime petrose' (1990) and has published articles on Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Ariosto. Robert Turner has been a professional illustrator since 1979; he is employed as a graphic artist in archaeology at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe.
'This new edition of Inferno is distinctly user-friendly....Serious students--in or out of the classroom--who...examine the original poem alongside a readable and reliable prose translation will find this edition excellently suited to their needs.' -The Christian Science Monitor
'A useful volume for students and first-time visitors to Dante's cosmos.'- Publishers Weekly
'In this new translation, Durling tries to be as concrete as possible, producing a version that is more fluent and accurate than the versions of Mandelbaum and Musa.... Highly recommended.' -Library Journal
'Like the Inferno edition that preceded it, the Durling-Martinez Purgatorio, with its beautiful translation and superb apparatus of notes, is simply the best edition of Dante's second canticle in English. No other version offers anything close to what we find gathered here in one volume.' -Robert Harrison, Professor of Italian, Stanford University
"As Durling and Martinez complete their monumental three-volume presentation of Dante's masterpiece, we can sense their triumph and elation, despite their characteristic modesty. This, after all, is the volume with which they can demonstrate the fullness and consistency of Dante's great project, its final approach to what they describe in one footnote as 'a pitch of intensity unique in all literature.' The scholarship, as always, is graceful, comprehensive, and acute, and it surrounds a translation that is so carefully considered and fully realized as to be, at times, quite breathtaking." --David Young, translator of The Poetry of Petrarch
Language
Italian
Level
Intermediate
Book Binding
Paperback
Book Dimensions
4.7 x 15.3 x 23.2 cm
Book Format
Parallel Text
Book Genre
Poetry
Book ISBN
9780195087451
Book Page Count
722
Book Publication Date
1 April 2004
Book Publisher
Oxford World's Classics