大象传媒

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dante鈥檚 鈥業nferno鈥� - a medieval journey through the nine circles of Hell. 鈥淎bandon hope, all ye who enter here鈥�. This famous phrase聽is written above the gate of Hell in a 14th century poem by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The poem is called the 鈥楧ivine Comedy鈥� and Hell is known as 鈥楧ante鈥檚 Inferno鈥�. It is a lurid vision of the afterlife complete with severed heads, cruel and unusual punishments and devils in frozen lakes. But the inferno is much more than a trip into the macabre - it is a map of medieval spirituality, a treasure house of early renaissance learning, a portrait of 14th century Florence, and an acute study of human psychology. It is also one of the greatest poems ever written. With, Margaret Kean, University Lecturer in English and College Fellow at St Hilda鈥檚 College,聽University of Oxford; John Took, Professor of Dante Studies at University College London and Claire Honess, Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Leeds and Co-Director of the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies.