This is the first volume of a new prose translation of Dante's epic - the first in twenty-five years. Robert Durling's translation brings a new power and accuracy to the rendering of Dante's extraordinary vision of Hell, with its terror, pathos, and sardonic humour, and its penetrating analyses of the psychology of sin and the ills that plague society. A newly edited version of the Italian text can be on facing pages, and this edition includes fully comprehensive notes as well as sixteen essays on special subjects.