The Cambridge Companion to Dante's ‘Commedia'

This newly commissioned volume presents a focused overview of Dante's masterpiece, the Commedia, offering readers of today wide-ranging insights into the poem and its core features. Leading scholars discuss matters of structure, narrative, language and style, characterization, doctrine, and politics, in chapters that make their own contributions to Dante criticism by raising problems and questions that call for renewed attention, while investigating contextual concerns as well as the current state of criticism about the poem. The Commedia is also placed in a variety of cultural and historical contexts through accounts of the poem's transmission and reception that explore both its contemporary influence and its continuing legacy today. With its accessible approach, its unstinting focus on the poem and its attention to matters that have not always received adequate critical assessment, this volume will be of value to all students and scholars of Dante's great poem.

• Provides a wide ranging and accessible overview of Dante's Commedia, investigating the poem's literary features and its cultural and historical contexts
• Explores the reception of the poem from its first publication to its influence today
• Presents strong focus on the poem itself, in order for readers to gain appreciation of the multiple facets of the Commedia's narrative