Dante’s Divine Comedy

The curriculum is written for high school and college students and for adult readers.

The Teacher’s Edition includes several schedule options, from 8 weeks to a full year.

There are more than a hundred English translations of the Comedy, and Joe Carlson has collected nearly twenty of them. His began as a word-for-word interlinear made to know Dante better in the original, became a readable English version, and finally a poem of its own. Every good translation shares a reader’s delight in the poem; this one is written for the Christian reader who wants to see, know, and love what Dante saw.

Dante wrote in terza rima, interlocking rhyming tercets. Rhyme in English tends to force odd and distracting syntax and extra words, while prose loses the poetry. Blank verse, unrhymed ten-syllable lines, lets the translation stay as literal as the prose versions and still read as verse. Carlson compares his approach with Sayers, James, Hollander, and Durling in the preface, which you can read in the free Sampler.

A summary before every canto and a scattering of footnotes where they are needed. The one-volume edition opens with Carlson’s introductions: who Dante was, what a “comedy” is, the two Dantes (poet and pilgrim), Church and State, and Contrapasso, followed by an introduction to each canticle. All other notes and the canto-by-canto analysis are in the Reader’s Guides.

The video delivers the lectures; the Teacher’s Edition prints those same lectures and adds the answer keys, exams, and schedules. A teacher who lectures from the notes can use the Teacher’s Edition alone, and a student working independently gains most from the video. Most families use both.

It is the same translation, with the same canto summaries and notes. The three volumes pair with the three Reader’s Guides; the single volume keeps the whole poem, and the introductions, in one book.

Unapologetically. Joe Carlson is a Reformed evangelical pastor and scholar. He reads Dante charitably as a brother in Christ. See "Evangelical Dante" lecture resource on this page.

As a Protestant, Carlson addresses it directly. Dante took the medieval doctrine as very minimal blueprint and built something entirely of his own out of it. In the poem, the souls on the mountain are already fully reconciled to God, and no sin is being punished because Christ has atoned for it already. What Dante paints is a picture of sanctification, or the retraining of loves and habits, for readers still in this life. Non-Protestant doctrines such as prayers for the dead and the veneration of Mary are discussed plainly when and where they arise.

Dante does not soften Hell, and neither does this translation. Three times Dante uses a vulgar word for filth, and Carlson renders it plainly; he explains why in his essay “Hell Is Obscene.” Parents of younger students may wish to preview Inferno XVIII and XXVIII.

They live in the Roman Roads App, on the web, iPhone, and Android, and unlock after purchase on this site.

The whole Comedy in one volume: Dante’s original Italian text, with a literal English gloss beneath each line. The complete interlinear is included as a PDF with the Teacher’s Edition and the Complete Curriculum. It is available for pre-order at $49.00.

Yes. The Dante Sampler is free as a PDF: a hundred pages covering Inferno III from every part of the curriculum.

See our school, co-op, and wholesale options, and our ESA and scholarship information.