title: Dante Alighieri's Inferno Metaphor: The Revised Interlinear Edition + 5 Novi Canti / With Illustrations (English & Italian Edition) (English and Italian Edition)
author: Dante Alighieri
description: This work is one of a kind. It is a work of translation, a poetic work, an artistic one, and a work of scholarship where the author reflects on teaching, interpreting and reading Dante s Inferno. On the translation side it is an interlinear translation of Dante s Inferno which alternates on every line with the original so that the translation follows the original at every turn. My aim for this book has been to provide a faithful translation, one that respects the integrity of meaning of the Italian, line by line and within each line, and even help the reader witness the transmigration of Italian lines into English, from one body and identity into another. (xvi) This process becomes a very convenient way for new readers of the Inferno, but not only for them, to follow the original more closely, or at least to know what Dante wrote and meant to say. The poetic aspect of this work is in the +5 cantos , in terza rima, where Cristiano in Dantesque style tells his own story, a reflection on his own encounter with the study of Dante, as well as an account of how he met his own Beatrice. While the +5 cantos are in Italian, there is an Epilogue in English, also in terza rima, which recounts an imaginary conversation between himself as a young bard and Dante, an echo of the exchange between Dante and Virgil in the first two cantos of the Inferno. An interesting feature of this Epilogue is that the terza rima gradually breaks down, as does its language, only to end in an incomprehensible gibberish. The artistic aspect of Inferno Metaphor consists of thirty illustrations that imitate the styles of the famous illustrators of this cantica from Blake to Dor to Guttuso to Rauschenberg to Moser. The more scholarly aspect of Anthony Cristiano s work is mostly present in the lengthy Introduction where the author discusses and reflects primarily on this first cantica, on Dante s scholarship, and on what it means to read Dante, as well as providing a general Introduction to the translation that follows. A good General Bibliography, and a more specific one on Dante scholarship and materials, follows the Introduction. --Prof. Massimo Verdicchio, University of Alberta - Annali d'Italianistica Vol. 29, 2011, pp. 512-513. --Prof. Massimo Verdicchio, University of Alberta<br /><br />For the first time Dante's masterpiece appears in interlinear translation: the original Italian and its English interlinear rendition on the same page. As the writer of the Preface puts it, when speaking of Cristiano s translation: the pedagogical efficacy of this operation is indisputable: the student, or fledging Dante enthusiast, can follow slavishly and directly the vortex of Dante s verse, remaining in close contact with the original, rather than being confined to a separate and independent translation, removed from its source [...] it is easy for me to recognize how much this interlinear translation has to offer to the analysis of the Dantean sentence and to the detection of the various grammatical and syntactical components of the same. It appears that for a number of years, centuries in fact, most translators have been concerned with the poems unique structure, particularly its rhyming scheme. A sort of reverential fear towards the terzina, thus, developing the idea of the total irreproducibility of Dante s syntactical order explains Prof. Pierno in his Preface to the book. How to render appropriately the idea of the terzina structure in a foreign language may still be a matter of academic debates, but while Cristiano s fifty page introduction acknowledges this, its focus is on debunking preconceived notions of immutability, and pretenses that justify the outputting of a number of domesticated translations , and its goal is to offer a close-to-literal translation that helps the reader and researcher to peer into, and even study, the Italian text, which is purposefully printed in bold characters. Another quite innovative notion introduced by this book is the concept of interlation. It is a new idea, a semantic and inter-textual move, conceived by the translator, and spoken about in the Introduction. In order to get a sense of how it works, though, one may have to look at the actual cases where the concept is being applied. Each case is annotated at the bottom of the page. For instance in canto I of the Inferno, on line eighty-six, the translator applies the following change: tu se un di color da cu io tolsi and in the note reports Before interlation: solo colui (the only one). In other words the function is discovered within the change, which makes indirect references to theological and philosophical notions married by the poet, and to the development and relevance of the tradition of ideas within Western thought. Moreover, there are several cases, throughout the Inferno translation, where entire tercets are introduced and annotated, thus increasing the length of the relevant cantos by few more lines as it is the case with the renowned canto V. These new approaches to the reading, and study, of Dante s masterwork, appear to be in line with the main idea inscribed in the title of the book: Dante Alighieri s Inferno Metaphor. In his long Introduction, Cristiano speaks at length of how the poem stands for, and as, a metaphor. At one point he writes: The primary metaphor pertains to the place and significance of the poem as The Poem, on par with The Book, that is, its identity, the textual entity it claims for itself, that something else it purports to be [...] The chief life determining choice the reader is called to make is not whether or not to believe or be deceived by Francesca, Brunetto Latini, or Ulysses speeches, but how to approach the poem as a poem, how to relate to its prophetical claims and secularized verse. --LibrarianClub - Worldcat
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  Table of Contents
  
  
  From the Pages of the Inferno
  
  
  Title Page
  
  
  Copyright Page
  
  
  Dante Alighieri
  
  
  The World of Dante and the Inferno
  
  
  The Story of the Inferno in Brief
  
  
  ## Introduction
  
  
  ### CANTO I
  
  
  
  
  
  CANTO I
  
  
  CANTO I I
  
  
  CANTO IV
  
  
  CANTO V
  
  
  CANTO VI
  
  
  CANTO VI
  
  
  CANTO VI I
  
  
  CANTO IX
  
  
  CANTO X
  
  
  CANTO XI
  
  
  CANTO XI
  
  
  CANTO XI I
  
  
  CANTO XIV
  
  
  CANTO XV
  
  
  CANTO XVI
  
  
  CANTO XVI
  
  
  CANTO XVI I
  
  
  CANTO XIX
  
  
  CANTO XX
  
  
  CANTO XXI
  
  
  CANTO XXI
  
  
  CANTO XXI I
  
  
  CANTO XXIV
  
  
  CANTO XXV
  
  
  CANTO XXVI
  
  
  CANTO XXVI
  
  
  CANTO XXVI I
  
  
  CANTO XXIX
  
  
  CANTO XXX
  
  
  CANTO XXXI
  
  
  CANTO XXXI
  
  
  CANTO XXXI I
  
  
  CANTO XXXIV
  
  
  Endnotes
  
  
  Six Sonnets on Dante’s The Divine Comedy
  
  
  Inspired by the Inferno
  
  
  Comments & Questions
  
  
  For Further Reading
  
  
  From the Pages of the Inferno
  
  
  Midway upon the journey of our life
  
  
  I found myself within a forest dark,
  
  
  For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
  
  
  (Canto I, lines I-3, page 3)
  
  
  “And a fair, sai