Picked up this book What am I in for?

>>9369035
It's really good, if you are interested in moral theology (and also helps if you have some notions of it) you should find it increasingly interesting with each song. However, if you don't truly care for christian thought in a certain level you may find it either boring or dense.

A goddamn treat. Highly suggest you read Aquinas along with that.

>>9369035
The greatest piece of literature of all time. You should really get the entire Divine Comedy though, and not just Inferno.

Not a huge fan of Dan Brown to be honest.

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I'm one to go. Waiting for Easter to start with it. Not at all planned that way, but I finished with Puragotory a weak ago and it seams fitting to wait a little to start with it.

Go with good annotated edition, or just go with the flow and don't worry about it too much. There's so much stuff packed into it, you are guaranteed to miss things. No prerequisites will prepare you. He's got Virgil, Roman legends, encyclopaedia of Florentine and neighbouring historical persona, deep astronomy, geography, theology, philosophy, humanism, love, and it's all surprisingly easy to read.

Hell: Rollercoaster ride of emotion. It goes from horrific to funny to horrific again in few cantos alone.
Purgatory: Much slower start, but the finale turns all the snow in the mountains of Italy into tears.

I'm a Dante scholar myself. Highly recommend the translation you have pictured there, the Hollanders did the best job of any English translation imo. They didn't attempt to capture the terza rima of the original Italian, but frankly the English language isn't really able to capture that rhyme scheme without sacrificing Dante's meaning and poetics.

The Inferno is a great entry point into Dante, but, if you have a little time, read his Vita Nuova first. It's short, detailing his early life and love for Beatrice. Francesca, one of the Inferno's most famous figures (Canto V) uses a lot of the same turns of phrase that Dante uses in his Vita Nuova, a meta-commentary on his own love in the past and in the present. This is only one of many instances where the two overlap.

All in all, >>9369171 got it right. Just buckle up and enjoy the ride. Each reading, you'll miss less and less and learn more and more. Dante wrote an extremely rich work, and we are fortunate to have it in its entirety. You can only read it for the first time once, so enjoy it, anon.

>>9369198
Are you on tenure in a University?

>>9369198
What is the best translation for Vita Nuova?

>>9369425
I'm a 6th year PhD Student finishing up a dissertation on the undercurrent of romantic love throughout the Comedy. Hopefully I'll be tenure track within a few years, though.

>>9369430
I'm partial to Mark Musa's.

>>9369451
Why Dante, if I may ask?

>>9369451
Are you a cute girl? Were you my TA in that one class? I want to lick your ass so badly. I wanted to come to your office hours and lick your ass.

>>9369468
There are very few texts that, in my opinion, can provide enough substance to study for decades, not years. Ulysses is one of those texts. Dante's Comedy is another. I don't intend to exclusively write or teach about Dante (I also have a great love for Chaucer and Boccaccio) but Dante has always had a special place in my heart. He begins lost, in need of guidance. By the end, he is the one giving us guidance, helping us along as he was helped along.

Philosophical struggles, spiritual plight; Dante does not begin as the master of himself, and recognizes his own faults. By recognizing them, he grows and learns. Each pass through, I feel like I come to know myself more, which in turn helps me know the Comedy more. Even to a reader who commits only to reading it once, attentively and without distraction, he offers so, so much more than nearly any other author.

>>9369502
I'm keen to begin!

>Ulysses is one of those texts. Dante's Comedy is another

Any other texts you would throw in?

>>9369502

Any other works you believe are saturated with as much substance as Ulysses and The Divine Comedy?

>>9369520
In my own experience, the Canterbury Tales, certainly. Don Quixote could also provide such a well, if one was inclined to entrench themselves in the context of the literary landscape Cervantes considers. 1001 Nights, as well.

I can't speak to things I haven't studied extensively, but one of my peers swears by Dostoyevsky as his holy grail. He loves him, won't stop talking about him. Another who I like hearing talk slightly more is writing for the Classics dept. here about Apollonius' Argonautica, which is also almost comically dense with meta-literary references.

>>9369551
i would add Moby Dick

>>9369478
fight your noble cause, anon!

Isn't the inferno just a part of the divine comedy?

>>9370807
Yes. It is the first book