Dante's Purgatorio

The second part of Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio takes readers on a journey to rather different environs. While Inferno examined the path of the author into the very depths of the abyss of hell, Purgatorio pushes skywards, taking us from the dungeons of damnation and placing us upon the slopes of the titular mountain.

Mount Purgatorio, located somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, represents the struggles and temptations that humankind must overcome if they are to attain Paradise, or Paradiso in the author’s native Italian. The inverse of Inferno’s plunging concentric circles, Purgatorio consists of seven terraces, built one on top of the other. Each associated with another level of Deadly Sin, our poet hero must navigate these steps as he plots his course toward the summit.

While less well-known than Inferno, Purgatorio remains a towering work of late-Medieval European literature, and its shadow still looms large over our cultural landscape. Many writers have tackled such lofty themes, but few have done with such aplomb as Dante Alighieri some seven centuries ago.