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List of English translations of the Divine Comedy

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List of English translations of the Divine Comedy
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The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is an epic poem in Italian written between 1308 and 1321 that describes its author's journey through the Christian afterlife.[1] The three cantiche[i] of the poem, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, describe Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, respectively. The poem is considered one of the greatest works of world literature[2] and helped establish Dante's Tuscan vernacular as the standard form of the Italian language.[3] It has been translated over 400 times into at least 52 different languages.[4]

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A room in Dante's House Museum [it] containing many translations of the Divine Comedy into different languages

Though English poets Geoffrey Chaucer and John Milton referenced and partially translated Dante's works in the 14th and 17th centuries, respectively,[5][6] it took until the early 19th century for the first full English translation of the Divine Comedy to be published.[7] This was over 300 years after the first Latin (1416),[8] Spanish (1515),[4] and French (1500s)[9] translations had been completed. By 1906, Dante scholar Paget Toynbee calculated that the Divine Comedy had been touched upon by over 250 translators[10] and sixty years later bibliographer Gilbert F. Cunningham observed that the frequency of English Dante translations was increasing with time.[11] As of 2023, the Divine Comedy has been translated into English more times than it has been translated into any other language.[4]

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List of translations

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A complete listing and criticism of all English translations of at least one of the three cantiche (parts) was made by Cunningham in 1966.[12] The table below summarises Cunningham's data with additions between 1966 and the present, many of which are taken from the Dante Society of America's yearly North American bibliography[13] and Società Dantesca Italiana [it]'s international bibliography.[14] Many more translations of individual lines or cantos[ii] exist,[15] but these are too numerous for the scope of this list.

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Full Prose Translations

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See also

Notes

  1. Latin-derived term for the three parts of the Divine Comedy. The singular form is cantica.
  2. Each cantica is divided into thirty-three or thirty-four cantos so that the Comedy has a total of one hundred
  3. The Divine Comedy was originally written in hendecasyllabic terza rima, i.e. eleven-syllable lines and a rhyme scheme of ABA BCB CDC ...YZY Z. Most English translations that attempt to replicate the rhyme scheme replace the hendecasyllables with iambic pentameter, a ten-syllable form more common in English-language poetry. Many translations use a simplified rhyme scheme of ABA CDC EFE, described by Cunningham and listed here as "defective terza rima".[16]
  4. Born Claudia Hamilton Garden. Used pen name "Mrs. Ramsay"[19]
  5. Son of Sir Edward Sullivan, 1st Baronet[23]

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