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In this book, Peter Dronke illustrates how medieval Latin traditions can help us to understand Dante's great poem 'The Divine Comedy'. He first discusses medieval conceptions of allegory and vision, image and metaphor, symbol and myth, as well as some of Dante's own insights into the nature of poetic meaning. Later chapters relate particular moments in the Comedy - the giants in Inferno, the apocalyptic showings in Purgatorio, and the solar heaven in Paradiso - to Dante's Latin inheritance. All quotations from Italian are accompanied by English translations.