
Set · The Dante Curriculum
The Reader’s Guides
Inferno · Purgatorio · Paradiso
By Joe Carlson
This bundle includes all three Reader’s Guides: a companion to every canto of the Divine Comedy, from Joe Carlson, its translator.
Explore the whole Dante CurriculumPart of the Dante Curriculum
See how it worksOr all of it in one order: the Complete Curriculum, with the Interlinear, the eBooks and the audiobooks.
Help into the boat
Stepping out of the modern, secular era and into a medieval Christian one is akin to stepping down from a dock into the middle of a little boat. If you are not careful, and don’t keep your wits about you, it would be easy to fall into the water and become discouraged from ever trying to get back into the boat again. But giving up the boat means giving up the water, the voyage, the experience, and the beauty.
In this volume, Carlson comes alongside and helps you into the boat, and points out the sights along the journey. Its goal is not only to help you understand and love Dante, but to read the Divine Comedy as he intended it to be read: as a window through which to see and know and enjoy the Triune God that much more.
What the guide gives for each canto
- 01A list of the characters
- 02The location of the action
- 03A summary of the canto
- 04Notes on the text, including allusions, translation comments, context, and information on the main characters
- 05An analysis of the canto
- 06Discussion questions for students
Three books: a guide to every canto
Inside the book

Inferno, Canto III in the Reader’s Guide.
See more first? Read the free Dante Sampler: Inferno III from every part of the curriculum.
PlayReader’s Guides: An Introduction
Daniel Foucachon and Dr. Joe Carlson discuss the Roman Roads Reader’s Guides that accompany the Roman Roads Classics.
“To accompany his smooth and literate translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Joe Carlson has put together a series of excellent Reader’s Guides that provide the necessary historical, literary, philosophical, and theological background.”

Dr. Joe Carlson
Joe Carlson holds a BA in Liberal Arts and Culture from New Saint Andrews College, and an MA in Humanities and a PhD in Literature from the University of Dallas. He is a Senior Editor with Roman Roads Press and a Literature professor at New Saint Andrews College.

Explore everything Dante
The poem in one volume or three, a guide to every canto, the lectures, the Teacher’s Edition, an interlinear, audiobooks read by the translator, and all of Dante’s prose. The most complete Dante in English, in one place.


