The Divine Comedy is one of the classics of world literature, and still taught in Italian schools to this day. This epic poem was finished in 1321, shortly before author Dante Alighieri's death, and ...

The American modernist Marianne Moore once wrote that poems are imaginary gardens with real toads in them. This applies nicely to Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” Its garden is the poem’s otherworld—based on ...

In 1321, the leading citizens of Ravenna, Italy, carried Dante’s body to his grave, far from his native Florence, from which he had been exiled for years. Left behind was one of the modern world’s ...

When Dante Alighieri died 700 years ago, on September 14, 1321, he had just put his final flourishes on the “Divine Comedy,” a monumental poem that would inspire readers for centuries. The “Divine ...