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This book is a psychological reading, emphasizing Dante’s universality. The Jungian concept of the “night journey,” the descent into the darkest areas of the self and of human nature, which is the precondition for spiritual growth, informs Dante’s journey through the three realms of the afterlife. Personal testimony about despair and recovery stands side by side with detailed close readings of much-discussed passages.
“The poet-scholar Alan Williamson’s Dante and the Night Journey takes us on a poet’s psychological, personal, and spiritual journey through Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante’s own anxiety, affliction, and failure parallel modern psychological despair, but recovery is possible with hope and love. This book points to how “Dante tells us some-thing about the deepest levels of the human mind.” – Brenda Deen Schildgen, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis
Preface; The Night Journey; Love; Anger; Ambition; The Tremulousness of Recovery; Identity in Paradise