Dante's Divine Comedy

"People who tackle Dante in [a] superficial way seldom get beyond the picturesque squalors of the Inferno. This is as though we were to judge a great city after a few days spent underground among the cellars and sewers; it would not be surprising if we were to report only an impression of sordidness, suffocation, rats, fetor, and gloom. But the grim substructure is only there for the sake of the city whose walls and spires stand up and take the morning; it is for the vision of God in the Paradiso that all the rest of the allegory exists."

In 1957 C.S. Lewis read my thesis about him and congratulated me: "You are in the centre of the target everywhere. For one thing, you know my work better than anyone else I've met.... If you understand me so well you will understand other authors too. I hope we shall have some really useful critical works from your hand."

With Dante's Divine Comedy: A Journey to Joy, Lewis's hope seems to be fulfilled. Nothing could be more useful today than enabling people to understand Dante. And nothing could be a better tribute to C. S. Lewis than the clearest, most accurate, and most readable edition of Paradise ever published in English.

"C. S. Lewis and Dante's Paradise," the introduction to this edition, reveals for the first time how pivotal Paradise was in Lewis's life and thought. The year after he first read Paradise, he became a believing Christian; and he was clearly influenced by Dante for the rest of his life. There are traces of The Divine Comedy throughout Lewis's writing, from The Pilgrim's Regress, his first Christian book, to Letters to Malcom, his last.

Unfortunately, few Americans today have read Dante's Paradise, and fewer yet have understood it — because it is the most complex and obscure part of the trilogy. There are parts that even leading Dante scholars have not understood. It is my privilege to fill in some of these gaps with new discoveries while leading ordinary readers up through the circles and spheres of Heaven.