Available for the first time in paperback, this essential resource presents a systematic introduction to Dante's life and works, his cultural context and intellectual legacy. The only such work available in English, this Encyclopedia: brings together contemporary theories on Dante, summarizing them in clear and vivid prose provides in-depth discussions of the Divine Comedy, looking at title and form, moral structure, allegory and realism, manuscript tradition, and also taking account of the various editions of the work over the centuries contains numerous entries on Dante's other important writings and on the major subjects covered within them addresses connections between Dante and philosophy, theology, poetics, art, psychology, science, and music as well as critical perspective across the ages, from Dante's first critics to the present.

A fully updated 2007 edition of this useful and accessible coursebook on Dante's works, context and reception history.

The guiding principle of this volume is the concept of the artes liberales, the trivium and quadrivium, as branches of learning that are rooted in Dante Alighieri's mind. The present volume contains essays by leading international scholars on the various scientific and artistic disciplines which form the background, sources, and presence in Dante's opus.

The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.

William Blake's series of illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy was his last major project and a summation of his religious and artistic beliefs. Blake intended to engrave this series, but it was unfinished at his death. The series includes seven partially complete engravings and 102 works in various stages of completion--some of the most beautiful pictures of his career. These pictures are not simple illustrations, but constitute a thorough reinterpretation and--in Blake's view--correction of Dante's poem. This book compares the two men's theological and artistic views and analyzes in detail the meaning of Blake's illustrations, for the first time introducing their theological and aesthetic exuberance to a modern audience.