Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy

As the unsurpassed Christian epic poem, Dante’s Divine Comedy provides not only far more personality and emotional depth than the pagan epics, it opens up all the issues on which Western history turns-truth, beauty, goodness, sin, sanctification, and triumph. In this guide, Peter J. Leithart brings his rich biblical-typological insight to bear in opening up the Comedy for students, high school and up, mainly the sort of kids who keep looking for the jokes in the “comedy.” After examining the meaning and place of the courtly love tradition leading up to Dante, the heart of the guide walks us carefully through the craft and symbolisms of each progressive stage-Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each section contains helpful study questions. Peter J. Leithart (Ph.D. Cambridge) is a Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature at St. Andrews College, as well as senior pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho. In his spare time, Leithart sleeps.