Dante: The Essential Commedia

A source of wonder and envy… . It makes us–if we are first-time readers–blink in wonder, or–if we are old hands who thought we knew Dante–feel as though we are understanding him for the first time… . Prue Shaw’s Reading Dante is a joy.–A. N. Wilson “The Spectator”Scholarly, compelling and original… . Much of the charm of Shaw’s book comes from the way she combines her personal interests and enthusiasms with scholarly accuracy and balance. If she underlines his perennial modernity, her Dante still remains the historical author… . [Reading Dante is] as interesting an introduction to Dante as one could hope to find in any language.–David Robey “Times Literary Supplement”

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence to a family of minor nobility. He entered into Florentine politics in 1295, but he and his party were forced into exile in a hostile political climate in 1301. Taking asylum in Ravenna late in life, Dante completed his Divine Commedia, considered one of the most important works of Western literature, before his death in 1321.

Prue Shaw is an emeritus reader in Italian at University College London. She is the editor of the edizione nazionale of Dante’s medieval Latin treatise Monarchia and of a groundbreaking digital edition of the Commedia. She lives in Cambridge, England.