Dante in Love

British historian, novelist, and journalist Wilson (The Victorians) has cultivated a lifelong love of Dante and the Divine Comedy. This book is both the product of that love and an assessment of Dante's contribution to Western notions of love, placing him in biographical and historical context. Wilson desired, he writes, to offer the sort of book he wished he'd had to guide him through his own first bewildered encounters with the Commedia. He follows a broadly chronological organization, elaborating on the historical, philosophical, theological, and artistic as he goes, always referring to the Divine Comedy, using a variety of contemporary translations. Wilson works in the spirit of Dante scholars of previous eras such as Paget Toynbee and later Anglican humanists such as Dorothy Sayers, drawing on them for materials and interpretations.