[JoeDetweiler]

Hmmm....I really ought to read “The Divine Comedy.” But I think I would need an annotated version to appreciate it.

Any recommendations, Freepers?

[Ransomed]

I’d get one that has the Gustave Doré illustrations.

http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_dore.html

FReegards

[maryz]

We used the Dorothy Sayers translation in college — very good and heavily annotated!

[AnAmericanMother]

My favorite translation is that by Dorothy Sayers (yes, THAT Dorothy Sayers, the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery stories). It has very thorough notes.

[xsmommy]

this book is very good. I am also enjoying Dreher's book. It was, in fact, Deher's pieces on Dante on the American Conservative blog, which led me to the first book.

[vladimir998]

I was thinking about doing the same (especially since Pope Francis recommended it for the Year of Mercy):

Dante: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Peter Hainsworth

Understanding Dante (The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies) by John A. Scott

Lectura Dantis: Inferno: A Canto-by-Canto Commentary by Allen Mandelbaum

Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture) by Peter Hawkins

Dante For the New Millennium (Fordham Series in Medieval Studies) by Teodolinda Barolini

Dante: The Poetics of Conversion by John Freccero

Dante’s Commedia: Theology as Poetry (ND Devers Series Dante & Med. Ital. Lit.) by Vittorio Montemaggi

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity by Prue Shaw

How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem by Rod Dreher

The Complete Danteworlds: A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy by Guy P. Raffa

I’m not claiming any of these are particularly Catholic in viewpoint. Dreher’s might be the best value in terms of accessible Christian scholarship. Another good one I read in 2007 is by the “Reformed” scholar Peter Leithart: Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Leithart is a good thinker and a great writer. And any Calvinist put on trial by his Presbyterian church for sounding too Catholic can’t be all bad! Here’s the conversion story of his prosecutor! http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/