There is little wonder that perhaps no other work of pure literature has aroused so much admiration in so many countries and so many readers as The Divine Comedy. A single listening will reveal its universality as well as Dante's visual imagination and uncanny power to make the spiritual visible.

The story is an allegory, representing "mankind, as by its merits or demerits, it exposes itself to the rewards or the punishments of Justice. 'The Inferno' is a description of Hell, conceived as a graduated conical funnel, to the successive circles of which various categories of sinners are assigned. 'The Purgatorio' is a description of Purgatory, a mountain rising in circular ledges, on which are the various groups of repentant sinners. And 'The Paradiso' is, of course, a vision of a world of beauty, light, and song."- The Oxford Companion to English Literature