Charles S. Singleton's edition of the Divine Comedy, of which this is
the first part, provides the English-speaking reader with everything he
needs to read and understand Dante's great masterpiece.
The Italian text here is in the edition of Giorgio Petrocchi, the
leading Italian editor of Dante. Professor Singleton's prose
translation, facing the Italian in a line-for-line arrangement on each
page, is smooth and literate. The companion volume, the Commentary,
marshals every point of information the reader may require: vocabulary;
grammar; identification of Dante's characters; historical sources of
some of the incidents and, where pertinent, excerpts from those sources
in their original languages and in translation; profound clear analysis
of the Divine Comedy's basic allegory. There is a complete
bibliography of every aspect of Dante studies.
This first part of the Divine Comedy which is illustrated with maps of
Italy and the region Dante knew especially, diagrams of the circles of
Hell, and plates showing some of the historic sites mentioned by Dante
in his poem.