The Florentine poet’s richly detailed vision of a journey through hell and beyond has inspired other writers and artists for ...

It's a lesser known work, much slimmer and more digestible than The Divine Comedy. It depicts a young Dante falling in love with his muse, Beatrice, who dies in the middle of the book.

This applies nicely to Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” Its garden is the poem’s otherworld—based on the ancient geocentric cosmos and Christian eschatology—and its toads are Dante’s ...