This is the volume I would consider to have initiated my collection. While I might have acquired the books above much earlier, this was the first book that I saw as part of my own collection. I had first encountered Dante in 1999 in a high school English textbook alongside the classic Gustave Doré illustrations of The Divine Comedy. When my paternal grandfather asked me what I wanted for Christmas, Dante was at the top of the list, preferably a volume with the Doré illustrations inside. Always one to please, my grandfather probably searched farther and wider than I am aware even now. He had not managed to find the book that I had hoped would be out there (it exists now, published by Barnes and Noble) but he DID find this fine book as well as a separate book of the complete Doré illustrations. I got BOTH for Christmas that year and have since enjoyed that fact that my own divine journey of book collecting began with this fine green-covered and rough-paged antiquarian edition of the Medieval Italian poet’s literary journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.
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My relationship with this text has recently grown as well since I just completed a graduate seminar on Dante and Italian Cinema. My paper for the course, which you can read here, dealt with affective piety and a specific scene in Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita. Fun stuff. I've included pictures of the translation I worked with for this paper below since you can see the original entry here.
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| A three volume set, as you can see. Especially nice since it includes Gustave Doré's art on its covers. |
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy 1: Inferno. Trans. John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy 2: Purgatorio. Trans. John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy 3: Paradiso. Trans. John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.
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