What would be the required reading for the Divine Comedy?

>Aeneid is not really necessary
It's referenced pretty heavily. It's not essential in the sense that you'll be lost without it, but you'd probably miss a lot of nuance without it.

>Do the catholic and protestant ones differ?

Yes, and Dante goes by the Catholic so he mentions certain figures like Judith or Judas Maccabeus which are not found in the protestant version.

One other thing worth mentioning is that the Paradiso section is the most complex and is based on medieval Catholic understandings of physics and metaphysics. Understanding the systems of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas may be useful

I know this sounds like a lot, but it does enhance one's enjoyment of the work. I read it for the first time with no preparation and liked it, but years later read it after having read more of the background works and was blown away by how intricately written it was. It's up to you how much preparation you want.

The Bible
The Æneid of Virgil
The Thebaid of Stace
The New Life of Dante himself

But Dante references a million other things, including saints' lives and details of his own city and personal life. You'll never be able to know everything, and don't try to.

The whole idea of needing to read a bunch of other books to be able to read one is a pseud meme that really needs to die.

The Aeneid
Metamorphoses
Iliad and Odyssey
The Bible

Also, learn Latin, Greek, and Italian first. Translations never do justice to poetry. If you must read translations, read Golding's Ovid and Gavin Douglas' Virgil.

Dante didn't know Greek you idiot. He couldn't have rred Homer.
And another faggot forgets Stace.

>He couldn't have rred Homer.
Not in Greek, but Canto IV of Inferno clearly implies that he had read him.

No, there were no Latin translations of Homer in his day.
He knew of Homer only through references and quotations in Latin authors. That's all.

What translation of vita nuova?

Dante's.

English translation, please.

As I said, Dante's.

Is Dante's in English?

Very funny

above user means Dante Gabriel Rossetti's version

Yes. Dante translated it from the Italian.

U got me

what translation would you rec?

not him, but Gavin Douglas is the best one if you can learn Middle English

>translation
Oh my, I don't know. It didn't occur to me that people here might not read Latin.

The Bible and the Aeneid are necessary. A passing familiarity with Aquinas and Boethius would also be helpful.

>I am so out of touch with reality it did not occurr to me people are not fluent in a dead language

You should also be aware of the history of the region and politics of his day. They get referenced quite a lot.

Funnily enough, the Barnes and Noble version of the Inferno has really stellar footnotes that explain all of that

mandelbaum

Thanks for the thread, Veeky Forums. Working on some of these to get my feet wet

Just a question, I wan't to read the KJV for the beautiful translation- but I also want to read the Catholic texts. What had been left out of the KJV, and in what order to read them?

You're really just making things harder for yourself by insisting on using older translations. In many places in the King James specifically there are flat out errors or misleading word usage, and the bible is already hard to enough to understand as a modern reader without those complications.

The Douay-Rheims is probably the most similar to the KJV if you still want to go that route. I don't know any good study guides or commentaries with translation though. You really should go with the RSV or RSV-2 since those are the most popular with Catholic converts and for that reason there's a lot of available study material.

The Iliad and Odyssey are required because of the Aeneid you fool

>What would be the required reading for the Divine Comedy?

The annotations that come with most copies of the book.

No, they aren't.
Everyone in the Latin middle ages- including Dante- studied the Æneid without any but the sparsest awareness of Homer.
Even after knowledge of Greek had returned to Latindom, a boy would have mastered Virgil before being turned to Homer. It's traditional to read the Trap of Mantua before the Fellator of Ionia.
I'm not saying that reading Homer don't inform Virgil. But he's no more "necessary" for a first reading than Ennius or Callimachus or Andronicus are.
You should read a few books many times, and closely, and many others. Which these are is accountable to your taste, but the idea of "needing" to read something to level up to read works, even inferior ones just because they're later, is vulgar.
Even if you disagree in general, to read Dante, reading Homer is quite unnecessary, since nothing of Homer could be in Dante that is not in Virgil, Stace, Ovid, or Cicero (&c.) You'd be better off studying Cavalcanti or, again, Cicero. Someone Dante -actually knew-.

So the KJV Bible and The Aeneid would be recommended while Ovid and La Vita Nueva can add something to it?

What would I need to read to grasp the theological background?

King James Version with Apocrypha. All available from wikisource if you are okay with reading online.

e.g.
>en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Judith

Ovid seems more important than the Aeneid. Whole canto where Dante riffs on and one-ups Ovid. Aeneid references are sparser, but existent.

It's not like doing a cursory reading of these texts will get you anywhere, anyway. You won't be reading Dante in the original and most of the references will be a) subtle in the extreme and b) footnoted (most editions use them extensively)

Of course reading Virgil and Ovid and the Bible would be best. But I was like to find an annotated version with explanations to all the references, and that makes the reading much more pleasant and productive. Just find an annotated edition!

Got any recommendations for an annotated version?

no, sorry, read it in spanish. This is it.

ISBN13: 9789871269372

I am Dutch myself but I am not sure if a Dutch translation would work, it's a lot further removed from Italian than Spanish.

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Thanks, I do insist reading the KJV first - since it's a prominent piece of literature in itself. However, I do plan on reading and keeping a catholic translation of the bible much later after I am finished.

I'm in Veeky Forums since 2006 and sometimes I wonder how you idiots are still capable of making me want to punch you in the face.

Is this the one by Crespo?

Thanks mate

isn't there someone who sperghates this pic

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how is it even possible to appreciate dante without having read the provencal poets in the original

This, read Arnaut Daniel

This seems like a weird choice for Dante. Surely a Catholic translation, which assumes a Catholic theology/hermeneutic, would be better suited? I would suggest Douay-Rheims or Knox for Catholic translations in beautiful English (D-R being practically the Catholic KJV).

You definintely should read La Vita Nuova. It works as a prologue.