of the great poets dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into english verse in the inferno dante not only judges sin but strives to understand it so that the reader can as well with this major new translation anthony esolen has succeeded brilliantly in marrying sense with sound poetry with meaning capturing both the poems linebyline vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure yielding an inferno that will be as popular with general readers as with teachers and students for as dante insists without a trace of sentimentality or intellectual compromise even hell is a work of divine artesolen also provides a critical introduction and endnotes plus appendices containing dantes most important sourcesfrom virgil to saint thomas aquinas and other catholic theologiansthat deftly illuminate the religious universe the poet inhabited