Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, guided by Virgil and Beatrice toward the vision of God. The supreme poem of the Middle Ages.
Books that mention The Divine Comedy (24)
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle: “Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into "mystic unfathomable song;" and this his _Divine Comedy_, the most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result.”
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: “I teach the sublime Dante to the young Misses, and ah!—my-soul-bless-my-soul!—it is not in human language to say how the sublime Dante puzzles the pretty heads of all three!”
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: “A man, too, who could boast of Dante for a genealogist, and could reckon back to the 'Divine Comedy.”
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell: “it was the Paradise of Dante, in the proper old Italian binding of white vellum and gold”
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: “When Dr. Westlake quoted the "Paradiso," "Don Quixote," "Wilhelm Meister," and the Koran, she reflected that no one she knew, not even her father, had read all four.”
New Grub Street by George Gissing: “Whilst I was writing “On Neutral Ground” I went solidly through the “Divina Commedia,” a canto each day.”
Penguin Island by Anatole France: “imaginary descriptions, like Dante Alighieri's 'Divine Comedy,' of the supposed abode of the dead”
The Red Lily by Anatole France: “Take the Divine Comedy, Eusebio. It is the white book which you see on the table.”
The Well of Saint Clare by Anatole France: “the account in verse which Dante Alighieri... wrote... of his journey to Hell and Purgatory and Paradise”
Demian by Hermann Hesse: “I named her Beatrice, because without having read Dante I already knew about Beatrice from an English painting I had a reproduction of.”
The Secret History by Donna Tartt: “"Do you know," he said, "what Julian says about the Divine Comedy?" "No, Henry, I don't." "That it's incomprehensible to someone who isn't a Christian? ... if one is to read Dante, and understand him, one must become a—"”
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell: “Compare Dante, 'Inferno,' XIV, 76-84 (Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy); also cited via Paradiso and Purgatorio, translation by Charles Eliot Norton.”
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell: “That is the problem of Dante's Divine Comedy, too.”
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón: “I've read a great deal, and can recite some of the best fragments of La Divina Commedia from memory”
Why Read the Classics by Italo Calvino: “Tirant essay (Lancelot/kiss motif); recurs in Borges essay (Ugolino)”
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco: “(epigraph, cantos of Purgatorio and Paradiso cited) —Dante, Purgatorio, XXVII, 100-102”
How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom: “as close as anyone has come ro persuading us rhar rhis is how Dame would sound had rhe poet of The Divine Comedy composed in English.”
Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag: “By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, ... the poetry of Donne, The Divine Comedy, Beethoven's quartets...”
Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag: “By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, Aristophanes' plays, The Art of the Fugue, Middlemarch, the paintings of Rembrandt, Chartres, the poetry of Donne, The Divine Comedy, Beethoven's quartets...”
On Literature by Umberto Eco: “discussed extensively, including as e-book reading example”
Coventry by Rachel Cusk: “Dante summed up the situation in The Divine Comedy: Once, Cimabue thought to hold the field In painting”
Kudos by Rachel Cusk: “'to see Dante awarded a single star ... and his Divine Comedy described as "complete shit"'”
The Last Supper by Rachel Cusk: “'Dante summed up the situation in the Divine Comedy: Once, Cimabue thought to hold the field In painting'”
The Wayfarer by Natsume Sōseki: “According to my brother, Paolo was the younger brother of Francesca's husband, and the two loved each other in secret until the husband found them out and killed them. It was a sad story, written somewhere in Dante's Divine Comedy, he said. [auto-translated]”