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The Harvard Classics 20: The Divine Comedy by Dante is unavailable, but you can change that!

When Charles William Eliot assembled The Harvard Classics, more commonly known as “The Five-Foot Shelf,” and later the “Shelf of Fiction”, he gathered this epic collection of key works which he thought would best represent “the progress of man… from the earliest historical times to the close of the nineteenth century.” In his introduction to The Harvard Classics, Eliot likens the collection to a...

ARGUMENT.—St. Bernard supplicates the Virgin Mary that Dante may have grace given him to contemplate the brightness of the Divine Majesty, which is accordingly granted; and Dante then himself prays to God for ability to show forth some part of the celestial glory in his writings. Lastly, he is admitted to a glimpse of the great mystery; the Trinity, and the Union of Man with God. “O VIRGIN MOTHER, daughter of thy Son! Created beings all in lowliness Surpassing, as in height above them
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