Dante's Divine Comedy is bewilderingly complex to the first-time reader, even on the literal level. (This complexity remains after many rereadings, but for many readers, it enhances the poem's appeal rather than hindering the reader's understanding.) Trying to keep track of the poem's more than five hundred characters often produces frustration, as do attempts to sort out thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Florentine politics and the city-state's conflicts with the papacy. However, Dante lived during a time when categorization—the orderly arrangement of knowledge—bordered on the obsessional, and his Divine Comedy is no exception. Indeed, it is a prime example of this drive to order. Therefore, its very structure helps the reader navigate and make sense of its complex world.
The poem is divided into three books or cantiche. Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Each book is then broken down.....
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