Boards
Dante's Divine Comedy
I bought this book because I had heard it's a great classic and I thought (past tense) that the plot seemed very interesting.
The book itself has no major flaws; the paper quality is very good and the text is not too small and is easy to read. Each canto has a short introduction at the beginning of it to explain to the reader what they can expect in the following canto.
In order to read this book, however, one needs a relatively advanced knowledge of Italian history & geography, as Dante mentions many (many) famous Italian people and places along his travels, far too many to individually look up one at a time. The translator does include notes to accompany each canto at the end of the book but they made very little sense to me.
Dante uses an incredibly convoluted form of language and takes many lines to get his point across. Many sentences make no sense at all and must be examined in the greatest of detail to discern their meaning.
All in all, not a book for the casual reader. I have awarded this book 2 stars because the physical qualities of the book are nothing to be complained about. The language and the content of the book are far too confusing.
Unless you're serious about buying this book, avoid The Divine Comedy outright, regardless of the edition; be it Wordsworth or the alternative from the Oxford Classics, you'll get confused relatively early on