The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
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The Divine Comedy
Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso

Author: Dante Alighieri, Stephen Wyatt

Narrator: Blake Ritson, David Warner, Full Cast, Hattie Morahan, John Hurt

Unabridged: 2 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/18/2014

Categories: Fiction, Religious


Synopsis

Blake Ritson, David Warner, Hattie Morahan and John Hurt star in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Dante's epic poem.

Inferno: Thirty-five year old Dante finds himself in the middle of a dark wood, in extreme personal and spiritual crisis. Hope of rescue appears in the form of the venerable poet Virgil, now a shade himself, who offers to lead Dante on an odyssey through the afterlife, beginning in the terrifying depths of Hell.

Purgatorio: Dante is led up Mount Purgatory by his guide. They encounter numerous souls who have embarked on the same difficult journey - one that will eventually lead to their spiritual salvation.

Paradiso: Dante's journey comes to a glorious conclusion as he is led by Beatrice, through the spheres of Paradise and into the presence of God himself. As they ascend, they encounter a number of souls who have also achieved blessedness.

Many years later, the older Dante reflects on the episodes from his life that have inspired his great poem.

©2014 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2014 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

About Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri, the Italian poet whose masterpiece The Divine Comedy has exerted a profound influence on Western thought, was born in Florence in 1265. He entered public life in 1295, later becoming one of the six governing magistrates of Florence. He repeatedly opposed the machinations of Pope Boniface VIII, who was attempting to place all of Tuscany under Papal control, and in 1301 was banished from Florence on trumped-up charges. Dante would never enter his native city again, spending his remaining years with a series of patrons in various courts in Italy. He completed The Divine Comedy shortly before his death in 1321.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Manny on December 27, 2008

"You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth." - Niels Bohr I was thinking about Dante the other day and wondering how one could approach him from the angle of a GoodReads review. One of the obvious problems is that he lived a lo......more

Goodreads review by Manny on December 15, 2021

I We attempt to rewrite the Divine Comedy Canto I In the middle of the journey of my life I came across a man named Trump Who seemed bent on causing much strife O! how he was an unpleasant, fleshy lump! Like some hobgoblin of the child's imagination Or a thing that in the night goes bump. But in spite of le......more

Goodreads review by Carlos on December 12, 2024

Aclaro algo: no soy religioso, ni intelectual ni estudioso de los dioses o lo que pasa antes o después de la vida y la muerte. Leí el libro y lo encontré muy bueno. Leí la obra en un solo libro, pero no sabía que estaba dividido en 3 partes. Al parecer, Infierno es la obra más conocida, y no es para......more

Goodreads review by Maddy ✨ on March 30, 2025

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate." "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy isn’t just a poem—it’s an eternal nightmare carved into literature. a journey through Hell’s horrors, Purgatory’s trials, and Heaven’s eternal glow. Sinners burn, the repen......more


Quotes

In a glorious adaptation of The Divine Comedy, Stephen Wyatt takes a potshot at bankers, forced to sit forever on hot sands under fiery rain. The Stage

He’s done a remarkable job. Out go the cantos and rigid rhyming structures. In comes a flowing narrative that loses none of the evocative imagery of the original. And it does Wyatt’s case no harm that the three central characters — Dante the younger, Dante the elder and Virgil, his ghostly omnipresent guide through hell, purgatory and paradise — are played by Blake Ritson, John Hurt and David Warner. Radio Times