List of English translations of the Divine Comedy
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 dialect as the standard form of the Italian language.[3] It has been translated over 400 times into at least 49 different languages.[4]
Though English writers have been interested in Dante since the 14th century, as evidenced by the fact that both Geoffrey Chaucer[5][6] and John Milton[7] referenced and partially translated his works, it took until the early 19th century for the first full English translation of the Divine Comedy to be published.[8] This was over 300 years after the first Latin (1416),[9] Spanish (1428),[10] and French (1500s)[11] translations had been written. By 1906, Paget Toynbee calculated that the Divine Comedy had been touched upon by over 250 translators[12] and sixty years later scholar Gilbert F. Cunningham observed that the frequency of English Dante translations was only increasing with time.[13] As of 2024, the Divine Comedy has been translated into English more times than it has been translated into any other language.[4]
List of translations
A complete listing and criticism of all English translations of at least one of the three cantiche (parts) was made by Cunningham in 1966.[14] The table below summarises Cunningham's data with additions between 1966 and the present. Many more translations of individual lines or cantos exist, but these are too numerous to allow the compilation of a comprehensive list.
See also
Notes
References
- ^ "Dante Alighieri: A Chronology – Digital Dante". digitaldante.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-20.
- ^ Bloom, Harold (1994). The Western canon : the books and school of the ages (1st ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace. ISBN 0-15-195747-9. OCLC 29637737.
- ^ See Lepschy, Laura; Lepschy, Giulio (1977). The Italian Language Today.
- ^ a b "The Divine Comedy in translation (first part) – New Italian Books". Retrieved 2022-06-20.
- ^ Chaucer, Geoffrey. "7.6 The Monk's Prologue and Tale". chaucer.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-18.
Whoever wants to hear [the tale of Ugolino] in a longer version, read the great poet of Italy who is called Dante, for he can all narrate in great detail; not one word will he lack.
- ^ Spencer, Theodore (1934). "The Story of Ugolino in Dante and Chaucer". Speculum. 9 (3): 295–301. doi:10.2307/2853896. ISSN 0038-7134. JSTOR 2853896. S2CID 162318293.
- ^ Milton, John (1641). Of Reformation. p. 30.
Dante in his 19. Canto of Inferno hath thus, as I will render it you in English blank Verse. 'Ah Constantine, of how much ill was cause / Not thy Conversion, but those rich demaines / That the first wealthy Pope receiv'd of thee.' So in his 20. Canto of Paradise hee makes the like complaint.
- ^ The Cambridge companion to Dante. Rachel Jacoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1993. ISBN 0-521-41748-1. OCLC 25964332.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ Zanobini, Michele (2016-10-26). "Per Un Dante Latino": The Latin Translations of the Divine Comedy in Nineteenth-Century Italy (PhD thesis). Johns Hopkins University.
- ^ Giuliano (2016-05-10). "Dante and Spain | Dante Poliglotta". Retrieved 2022-06-20.
- ^ Holekamp, Elizabeth Lambert (May 1985). Dante into French: The Earliest Complete Translation of the Divine Comedy (Italy) (PhD thesis). Indiana University. ISBN 979-8-205-68776-8. ProQuest 303347414.
- ^ "The many ways in which Dante has been translated". TLS. Retrieved 2022-06-20.
- ^ Cunningham, Gilbert F (1966). The 'Divine comedy' in English: a critical bibliography. Edinburgh; London: Oliver and Boyd. OCLC 278692745.
- ^ Gilbert F. Cunningham, "The Divine comedy in English: a critical biography 1782-1966". 2 vols., Barnes & Noble, NY; esp. v.2 pp.5-9
- ^ Charles Rogers (1782). The Inferno of Dante, Translated. London: J. Nichols.
- ^ Cunningham, G. F. (1954). "Divine Comedy in English: a critical bibliography of Dante['s] translation, 1782-1954".
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ Henry Francis Cary. Dante's Inferno. New York: Cassell Publishing Company.
- ^ The Cambridge companion to Dante. Internet Archive. Cambridge : CambridgeU. P. 1993. pp. 245–246. ISBN 978-0-521-42742-5.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ Alighieri, Dante (1904). The Inferno. J.M. Dent and Company.
- ^ Cunningham, G. F. (1954). "Divine Comedy in English: a critical bibliography of Dante['s] translation, 1782-1954". Edinburgh Research Archive. 1: 229–245.
- ^ David Johnston (1867). A Translation of Dante's Inferno. Bath.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Cunningham, G. F. (1954). "Divine Comedy in English: a critical bibliography of Dante['s] translation, 1782-1954". Edinburgh Research Archive. 1: 255.
- ^ Charles Eliot Norton (1920). The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Houghton Mifflin.
- ^ Cunningham, G. F. (1954). "Divine Comedy in English: a critical bibliography of Dante['s] translation, 1782-1954". Edinburgh Research Archive. 1: 428.
- ^ Dante Alighieri; Wicksteed, Philip H; Oelsner, Herman (1899). The Paradiso of Dante Alighieri. London: J.M. Dent and Co. OCLC 1354133.
- ^ Dante Alighieri; Oelsner, Herman; Okey, Thomas; Wicksteed, Philip H (1901). The purgatorio of Dante Alighieri. London: J.M. Dent. OCLC 7368155.
- ^ Cooper, Roslyn Pesman (1989-10-01). "Sir Samuel Griffith, Dante and the Italian Presence in Nineteenth-Century Australian Literary Culture". Australian Literary Studies. 14 (2): 199–215.
- ^ "The Inferno (Dante Alighieri): The Immortal Drama of a Journey through Hell". folkways.si.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-20.
- ^ Josephine Balmer (1994-03-13). "BOOK REVIEW / The lost in translation: 'Hell' - Dante Alighieri". The Independent. Retrieved 2017-04-20.
- ^ a b Barbarese, J. T. (2009). Alighieri, Dante; Zappulla, Elio; Ciardi, John; Mandelbaum, Allen; Hollander, Robert; Hollander, Jean (eds.). "Four Translations of Dante's "Inferno"". The Sewanee Review. 117 (4): 647–655. ISSN 0037-3052. JSTOR 40542670.
- ^ Parks, Tim (2001-01-08). "Hell and Back". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2022-07-12.
- ^ Alighieri, Dante (2010-09-30). The Divine Comedy. Northwestern University Press. pp. xii. ISBN 978-0-8101-2672-5.
- ^ "The Divine Comedy: 700th Anniversary Edition (English Only / 1 Volume)". Alma Books. Retrieved 2022-06-02.
- ^ ""This Is About Living": Translating Dante with Mary Jo Bang". Columbia - School of the Arts. Retrieved 2022-06-20.
- ^ "Mary Jo Bang's "Dante"". Poetry Society of America. Retrieved 2022-06-02.
- ^ "What the Hell". The New Yorker. 2013-05-20. Retrieved 2022-06-20.
- ^ Dante Alighieri (2018). Hell : Dante's Divine trilogy. Part 1. Translated by Gray, Alasdair. Edinburgh. ISBN 978-1-78689-253-9. OCLC 1080525184.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ "Sampletranslations". D M Black. Retrieved 2022-06-01.
External links
- Translations: Rogers, Cary, Carlyle, Longfellow, Norton, Griffith, Mandelbaum, Hollander and Hollander (Poem; Commentary)
- Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy. Ugolinomania - Early English Translations of the Ugolino Episode from Chaucer to Jennings containing translations from Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s–1400), Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745), Thomas Gray (1716–1771), Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti (1719–1789), Joseph Warton (1722–1800), Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748–1825), Thomas Warton (1728–1790), Charles Rogers (1711–1784), Henry Boyd (c. 1750–1832) and Henry Constantine Jennings (1731–1819).
- Divine Comedy in English: a critical bibliography of Dante['s] translation, 1782-1954 (1955) by G. F. Cunningham
- "Dante in English" from The Cambridge Companion to Dante (1993)
- Dante Poliglatta
