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| | Amazon.com: Books: Dante (Penguin Lives) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22) |
 | | Given the strictures on what can be covered in a small number of pages, other biographers of other writers often focus on an individual's life to the near exclusion of all else, or on the greater cultural context of their work, or on a discussion of the writings, ignoring the writer's world and life. |
 | | On Dante's masterpiece: "The Commedia, to which the adjective Divina was affixed two centuries afterward, is, all things considered, the greatest single poem ever written; and in one perspective, as has been said, it is autobiographical: the journey of a man to find himself and make himself after having been cruelly mistreated in his homeland. |
 | | On progression in the Paradiso: In it, "Dante ascends; he does not climb, as in the Purgatorio, but, as he is constantly remarking, is propelled upward with the speed of an arrow. |
| www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670899097?v=glance (2452 words) |
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