The most useful reference book at present is The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing (New York: Garland. 2000). For those who know Italian the Enciclopedia dantesca, ed. Umberto Bosco (Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970-78) is a valuable resource. The journal Dante Studies publishes a yearly “American Dante Bibliography.”

DANTE TRANSLATIONS

I have listed below some of the most reliable and well annotated translations, all of which are now available in paperback.

1. Durling, Robert M. and Ronald L. Martinez. Inferno and Purgatorio. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 and 2003.

2. Hollander, Robert and Jean. Inferno and Purgatorio. New York: Doubleday, 2000 and 2003.

3. Mandelbaum, Allen. Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. New York: Bantam Classic, reissued 2004.

4. Singleton, Charles S. Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970–75.

The Paradiso is the continuation and culmination of the earlier canticles, and at the same time a new departure. Refiguring themes, issues, images, and episodes from Inferno and Purgatorio, it nonetheless establishes a new set of conditions for both the poet and the reader. While the poet's memory has hitherto been sufficient to his task, the Paradiso acknowledges the gap between memory and experience in its opening lines, and, even more, the gap between both psychological categories and language itself. The agon of the poet in his attempt to negotiate this space beyond memory and speech is ever more insistently foregrounded as the poem progresses. But the poem also provides a series of investitures by figures of increasing authority, calling attention to its progressive definition as a “poema sacro,” a sacred text “to which both heaven and earth have set their hand.” The reader, too, is repositioned. A series of direct addresses, as well as a number of “tasks” which actively engage imaginative collaboration, implicate the reader in the work of the poem.

The Paradiso is the continuation and culmination of the earlier canticles, and at the same time a new departure. Refiguring themes, issues, images, and episodes from Inferno and Purgatorio, it nonetheless establishes a new set of conditions for both the poet and the reader. While the poet's memory has hitherto been sufficient to his task, the Paradiso acknowledges the gap between memory and experience in its opening lines, and, even more, the gap between both psychological categories and language itself. The agon of the poet in his attempt to negotiate this space beyond memory and speech is ever more insistently foregrounded as the poem progresses. But the poem also provides a series of investitures by figures of increasing authority, calling attention to its progressive definition as a “poema sacro,” a sacred text “to which both heaven and earth have set their hand.” The reader, too, is repositioned. A series of direct addresses, as well as a number of “tasks” which actively engage imaginative collaboration, implicate the reader in the work of the poem.