Dante for Beginners

Dante For Beginners takes the reader on a magical trip through Heaven and Hell. Well, this isn't exactly true. After an introduction to Dante Alighieri and his background, the reader meets a sweet lass named Beatrice, the love of his life and the subject of many of his poems. Then the reader explores other samples of Dante's works, such as the great feast, the Convivio. The reader is ultimately led through Dante's most famous and challenging masterpiece, the Commedia, also known as the Divine Comedy, with a canto by canto description of the entire text from Heaven to Hell. Characters, ideas and situations are described as they happen without the need to search through end notes or footnotes to understand the text. Dante For Beginners is a vacation through great Italian literature with history's greatest guide, Dante Alighieri.

Joe Lee, born in Olney, Illinois, is an illustrator, cartoonist, author, and clown. A graduate from Indiana University and the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey's Clown College, he worked for many years in a travelling circus. He is also the illustrator for many other "For Beginners" books including: Dada and Surrealism For Beginners, Postmodernism For Beginners, Deconstruction For Beginners, The Olympics For Beginners, Existentialism For Beginners, and Zinn For Beginners. Joe lives with his wife, Mary Bess, three cats, and two dogs (Toby and Jack). The author lives in Bloomington, Indiana.