What are all the books I should read before jumping into the

It's not really necessary, Dante has more shit than you will ever recognise either way, and you'll absolutely need annotations.

Uhh, maybe Homer, Plutarch (?), some kind of basic familiarity with the Roman revolutionary period (130s BC - 100 AD) might be good?, Petrarch would be good

(Divine) Comedy option: read some of Schevill's academically outdated but perfectly decent history of Florence, mostly the parts up to and including Dante himself.

European Extreme: Read Hans Baron's Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 500 pages of dense philology

>>9410779

Thanks m8.

Any recommendation regarding translation and annotations? Which edition is your favorite and which is best for someones first read through?

>>9410779
don't listen to this faggot. i read the divine comedy in highschol with no annotations or background knowledge in literature besides Homer and I was fine

dante is a good writer just read his words, don't approach it like some secret code.

lit has the worst capacity for actually reading

You don't need anything.

A biography on Dante would help, but I'd read it after/before a second reading. A lot of editions come with footnotes.

>>9410861
You probably missed 85% of the content, not even exaggerating

>>9410850
longfellow

File: DanteChart.jpg (867KB, 1400x5316px) Image search: [Google]

867KB, 1400x5316px

>>9410850
I loved Ciaran Carson's translation. It's probably the most "contemporaneusly similar" if that makes sense, as TDC was written in vernacular, so Carson tries to imitate that

is there a side-by-side french-tuscan version?

Read about Dante's life and you will get all the references like Papa in hell or family Scala.