Robin Kirkpatrick – författare

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all. For it is only by encountering Satan, in the heart of Hell, that he can truly understand the tragedy of sin.

Inferno is the first part of Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy, revealing the eternal punishment reserved for such sins as greed, self-deception, political double-dealing and treachery. This Penguin Classics edition is translated and edited with an introduction and notes by Robin Kirkpatrick.Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all. Portraying a huge diversity of characters culminating in a horrific vision of Satan, the Inferno broke new ground in the vigour of its language and storytelling. It has had a particular influence on Modernist writers and their successors throughout the world.Printed in English with facing pages in Dante's Italian, this edition offers commentaries and notes on each canto by Robert Kirkpatrick.Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), scion of a Florentine family, mastered in the art of lyric poetry at an early age. His first major work is La Vita Nuova (1292) an exercise in sonnet form constructed as a tribute to Beatrice Portinari, the great love of his life. It is believed that The Divine Comedy - comprised of three canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso - was written between 1308 and 1320.If you enjoyed the Inferno you might like Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, also available in Penguin Classics.'Kirkpatrick brings to this English Dante both his perfect knowledge of the Italian and an extraordinarily good ear in his own language' Professor Piero Boitani, University of Rome

In Purgatorio Dante, having described his journey into Hell, narrates his ascent of Mount Purgatory with Virgil, as he encounters penitents who toil through physical agonies, starvation and flames to assuage their earthly vices. Only by learning from them can he achieve his final enlightened transition to the lost Earthly Paradise at the mountain’s summit, where he meets his dead love, Beatrice, and prepares to ascend to Heaven. Depicting a realm of intense sensation and physical experience, Dante’s poem transformed the traditional Christian idea of Purgatory by showing how the free will of the aspiring soul could change wordly perversions into perfection. It is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human possibility, hope and redemption.

Having plunged to the uttermost depths of Hell and climbed the Mount of Purgatory in parts one and two of the Divine Comedy, Dante ascends to Heaven in this third and final part, continuing his soul’s search for God, guided by his beloved Beatrice. As he progresses through the spheres of Paradise he grows in understanding, until he finally experiences divine love in the radiant presence of the deity. Examining eternal questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, Dante exercised all his learning and wit, wrath and tenderness in his creation of one of the greatest of all Christian allegories.

This book represents a major re-assessment of Dante's Inferno, and of the place which the Inferno occupies in the plan of the whole Commedia. On evidence drawn also from the Paradiso and Purgatorio, Dr Kirkpatrick argues that Dante's thinking and poetry are subject to far greater internal tension than is commonly supposed. He then proceeds to analyse each of the thirty-four cantos of the Inferno, and to relate each canto in turn to its thematic and narrative context. Throughout, Dr Kirkpatrick is particularly concerned with features of language and structure which scholars have tended to overlook in emphasising the philosophical character of Dante's poetry. And while he chooses, for the sake of clarity, to write in the accessible language of interpretative criticism, he continually stresses the extent to which advances in modern critical practice may usefully be brought to bear upon Dante's writing.

In this 1978 book, it is Dr Kirkpatrick's contention that critics have yet to present a satisfactory account of Dante's originality in the Paradiso. We shall best appreciate the Paradiso, he argues, if we recognise that poetry can not only dramatise thought, but also offer a thorough analysis of religious and philosophical belief. Considering Dante's own discussions of poetry and language in the Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia, Dr Kirkpatrick claims that, for Dante, direct and careful statement is itself a special responsibility of the poet. This attitude is shown in detail to conflict with a view that critics continue to derive from T. S. Eliot and from theoreticians such as Croce and Terracini, whereby poetic language is allowed only an expressive and imaginative function. Dr Kirkpatrick demonstrates how in practice Dante's adoption of analytical language influences the organisation of his poem and his handling of word and image.

In this accessible critical introduction to Dante's Divine Comedy Robin Kirkpatrick principally focuses on Dante as a poet and storyteller. He addresses important questions such as Dante's attitude towards Virgil, and demonstrates how an early work such as the Vita nuova is a principal source of the literary achievement of the Comedy. His detailed reading reveals how the great narrative poem explores the relationship that Dante believed to exist between God as creator of the universe and the human being as a creature of God. In addition, Kirkpatrick takes due account of the historical and philosophical dimensions of the poem.

This is the first comprehensive critical comparison of English and Italian literature from the three centuries from Dante to Shakespeare. It begins by examining Chaucer's relationship with Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and then looks at similar relationships within the areas of humanist education, lyric poetry, the epic, theatrical comedy, the short story and the pastoral drama. It provides a detailed comparison of major works from both traditions including descriptive and critical readings of Italian works. It shows why English writers valued such works and demonstrates the ways in which they departed from or tried to outdo the Italian original. Assuming no prior knowledge of Italy or Italian literary history, this book introduces the student and general reader to one of the most important and fascinating phases in European literary history.

Challenging some of the popularly-held views on the Renaissance period, this book draws equal attention to the strangeness and often unresolved tensions that lay beneath the surface of that culture. Insisting on a European rather than purely Italian viewpoint, it embraces Renaissance thinking and culture in all its diversity.

With Italy at its centre, but encompassing the whole of Renaissance Europe, this evocative history challenges some of the popularly-held views on the Renaissance period. In particular, whilst always acknowledging the brilliance and exhuberance of Renaissance culture, Robin Kirkpatrick draws equal attention to the strangeness and often unresolved tensions that lay beneath the surface of that culture.Insisting on a European rather than purely Italian viewpoint, he embraces Renaissance thinking and culture in all its diversity: from Northern thinkers such as Cusanus, Luther and Calvin, to the painting of Van der Weyden and El Greco, and the music of the Flemish musicians, Josquin des Prez and Orlando Lassus. Special attention is also paid to the unique contribution made by Margueritte of Navarre to the development of humanist culture. The book concludes with a study of Shakespeare in which his plays are viewed as a searching critique of some of the main principles of Renaissance culture.