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• Introduces Dante through four main approaches: the context of his life and career; his literary and cultural traditions; key themes, episodes and passages in his own work, especially the Commedia; and the reception and appropriation of his work by later readers, from the fourteenth century to the present
  
• Written by an expert Dante scholar
  
• Provides new translations of substantial passages from Dante’s poems and from the world of his contemporaries
  
• Includes explanatory diagrams of Dante’s 'other-worlds', and a section of illustrations by medieval and modern artists
  
• Builds a vivid and complex picture of Dante's imagination, intellect and literary presence
  
• Helpful bibliographies include relevant web resources
  

"A richly nuanced discussion that offers an excellent introduction to Dante and will be read with profit by anyone coming to the great poet for the first time.... This is a useful and informative introduction to Dante, wide in its scope and accessible in its presentation." (Notes and Queries, December 2009)

"It is a book that can be read profitably from cover to cover, or it can be used as a resource for the reader who, for pedagogical or informational purposes, wants to pick and choose." (Speculum-A Journal of Medieval Studies, April 2009)

"All-in-one book covers everything.... Written in clean, accessible prose. Even Dante experts will enjoy Havely's refresher course. Vital in the library and classroom. Essential." (CHOICE, July 2008)

Nick Havely has taught courses on Dante and on medieval literature for over thirty years at the University of York. His published work on Italian trecento poetry began with a volume of translations: Chaucer's Boccaccio: Sources for Troilus and the Knight's and Franklin's Tales (1980; reissued 1992) and includes Dante's Modern Afterlife: Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney (1998) and Dante and the Franciscans: Poverty and the Papacy in the 'Commedia' (2004). He has recently been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for his next project, which is a study entitled Dante in the English-Speaking World, from the Fourteenth Century to the Present.