The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso

Informed by a profound belief in the dignity and compassion of humanity, and influenced by the turbulent society of thirteenth-century Italy, Dante's Commedia is one of the most extraordinary visions of sin and redemption in literature. A work of boundless invention and vast intellectual synthesis, it broke new ground with the vigour of its language and storytelling. The three parts of the Commedia chart the spiritual and physical journey of Dante: in the Inferno he descends into a freezing Hell with the Roman Virgil as his guide, in Purgatorio he climbs Mount Purgatorio and is reunited with his last love, Beatrice, and, finally, in Paradiso, he ascends to heaven and a sphere beyond space and time.