Dante’s Inferno: A Study on Part I of The Divine Comedy

Taught by Anthony Esolen, Ph.D.

Dante’s Divine Comedy can rightly be called the greatest poem ever written, praised through the ages by a pantheon of writers and scholars. Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) referred to Dante’s crowned “visionary brow.” Irish novelist James Joyce (1882-1941) said “Dante is my spiritual food!” Pope Benedict XV (1854-1922) called Dante “the most eloquent singer of the Christian idea.” Even the 20th century literary critic T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) famously wrote that “Shakespeare and Dante divide the world between them, there is no third.”

Just as Dante needed Virgil to lead him through the bowels of Hell, you also need a true and trustworthy guide. Dr. Anthony Esolen serves as your Virgil in this course on the Inferno, the first canticle of the Divine Comedy. An expert who has taught Dante to college students for more than twenty years, Dr. Esolen is also the preeminent modern translator of the entire Divine Comedy from the original Italian.