Doing something I don't think I've ever done so far in this class and getting the reading diaries done in the same night! Like in the first diary post for Dante's Inferno, I'm just gonna keep this one fairly short again to save up some material for the storybook and storytelling.
Dante's most recognized work is considered the best Italian literature ever created, and one of the world's greatest works as well, up there with the obvious choices like The Odyssey or Hamlet. It took him twelve years to write and has 14,233 lines. That's not a typo, that's fourteen THOUSAND lines, all perfectly within his terza rima rhyme scheme. By the way, all of this information is readily available on Wikipedia.
One interesting aspect of The Inferno is that while each Canto, what Dante used to divide each section of his journey, is a different tale in a way, the entire poem is an allegory. But there are other ways to interpret the poem, according to Dante himself. The entire first poem, from his first encounter with the leopard blocking his way to Heaven, all the way down the Inferno to Satan himself, has other political, religious, and philosophical undertones that may not be entirely apparent on the first read. This is why almost 700 years later, people are still studying the various techniques and intricacies of Dante's greatest poem.
Super interesting cover art of the three sections of The Divine Comedy
Source: DeviantArt user TyrantWave
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