The Purgatory of Dante Alighieri

What it is

A printed edition of the Purgatorio, the second part of Dante's Divine Comedy, edited with translation and notes by Arthur John Butler and published in 1880. The scanned book is held by the Internet Archive.

Why it matters

This is Dante's own poetic text, describing his imagined journey through Purgatory, central to his standing as one of the great poets of world literature. Editions like this, with scholarly notes, show how later generations worked to make his medieval Italian accessible to new readers.

Look closer

• Why does the editor feel he needs to apologize for adding yet another translation?
• What does the quoted French comment about reading Dante "closely" suggest about the difficulty of his poetry?
• What might be lost or changed when translating a 14th-century poem for 19th-century readers?