Part One
Ante-Purgatory
Cantos I – IX
The shores and lower slopes of the mountain, where souls linger before they may begin the climb proper — the excommunicated, the negligent, those who died repenting too late.
Canto One
Dawn on the Shore — Cato the Guardian
Dante and Virgil emerge from Hell into the southern sea, and an old man bars their way.
Canto Two
The Angel Boatman — Casella's Song
A luminous vessel carries souls to the mountain's shore, and an old friend sings — but the journey cannot wait.
Canto Three
Virgil's Limits — Manfred of Sicily
Virgil meditates on the inscrutability of God's ways, and a handsome king reveals that mercy outlasts excommunication.
Canto Four
The Steep Climb — Belacqua
Dante discovers that time disappears in contemplation, and finds a famously lazy Florentine friend sitting in the shade.
Canto Five
Those Slain by Violence — Buonconte and La Pia
Three souls who died sudden, violent deaths tell their stories — one lost on a battlefield, one murdered in silence.
Canto Six
Prayer for the Dead — The Lament for Italy
Dante questions whether prayer can change fate, and breaks into furious polemic against his ravaged homeland.
Canto Seven
The Valley of Negligent Rulers
Sordello leads them to a flowered valley where the great kings of Europe sit at dusk, powerless and waiting.
Canto Eight
The Evening Angels — The Serpent Repelled
Two angels descend at dusk to guard the valley, and an old serpent tests their vigilance in the quiet dark.
Canto Nine
The Dream of the Eagle — The Three Steps of the Gate
Dante is carried to Purgatory's gate in a dream, and an angel guards a door no locksmith has ever made.
Part Two
The Seven Terraces
Cantos X – XXVII
The mountain's body, organized around the seven capital sins. Each terrace offers examples of the opposing virtue (humility against pride, generosity against envy), then examples of the sin punished, then an angel who erases one P from Dante's forehead as he departs.
Pride
Superbia — disordered love of self, elevated above love of God and neighbor
Canto Ten
The Marble Reliefs of Humility
Carvings on the pavement show perfect examples of lowliness — and the proud bear their loads beneath.
Canto Eleven
The Lord's Prayer — The Vanity of Fame
Oderisi of Gubbio delivers a meditation on the emptiness of earthly glory, with Dante himself caught in its net.
Canto Twelve
The Pavement of Pride's Fall — The First P Erased
The ground beneath Dante's feet shows pride destroyed, and an angel's wing lifts the first burden from his brow.
Envy
Invidia — sorrow at another's good, desire to diminish what one cannot possess
Canto Thirteen
The Blind Envious — Sapia of Siena
On a ledge of bare grey stone, the envious sit with their eyes sewn shut — they sinned through looking, and so are denied sight.
Canto Fourteen
The Corruption of the Arno — Voices of Envy Punished
Two souls dissect the moral ruin of every town along a river, and invisible voices cry out the punishment of jealousy.
Wrath
Ira — disordered love turned to destructive rage
Canto Fifteen
On Shared Goods — Visions of Meekness
Virgil explains why love multiplied is love expanded, and Dante has his first waking vision of gentleness.
Canto Sixteen
Marco Lombardo — Free Will and the Two Suns
In blinding smoke, a soul dismantles the excuse of the stars and diagnoses why civilization has collapsed.
Canto Seventeen
Visions of Wrath — Virgil's Map of Love
Dante sees in his mind the destruction that rage has brought, and Virgil unveils the entire structure of Purgatory.
Sloth
Acedia — love insufficiently ardent, spiritual torpor toward the good
Canto Eighteen
Love, Freedom, and the Running Penitents
Virgil finishes his philosophical lecture, midnight arrives, and then a rush of shouting souls tears through the dark.
Avarice & Prodigality
Avaritia — excessive love of material goods, the goods of fortune loved too ardently
Canto Nineteen
The Dream of the Siren — Pope Adrian V
Dante dreams of a crooked, ugly woman who becomes beautiful in his gaze — and wakes to find a pope flat on the earth.
Canto Twenty
Hugh Capet's Lament — The Great Earthquake
The founder of France's royal dynasty curses his own descendants, and the whole mountain suddenly shakes.
Canto Twenty-One
Statius — The Release of a Soul
A newly freed soul joins them, explains the mountain's earthquake, and dissolves into tears when he learns who walks beside him.
Canto Twenty-Two
Statius's Conversion — The Tree of Temperance
Statius explains how Virgil made him both a poet and a Christian, and they arrive at a tree that pours water upward.
Gluttony
Gula — excessive appetite, the body's pleasures loved too much
Canto Twenty-Three
Forese Donati — The Hollowed Gluttons
A dearest friend appears, so thinned by hunger he is barely recognizable, and mourns the immodesty of Florence's women.
Canto Twenty-Four
Bonagiunta and the Sweet New Style
A poet asks Dante to name his poetic secret, and Dante gives the most concentrated definition of his own art.
Lust
Luxuria — the disordered excess of love's bodily fire
Canto Twenty-Five
The Philosophy of the Shadow Body
Statius delivers a medical and metaphysical lecture on how the soul, without a body, can still hunger and burn.
Canto Twenty-Six
Guinizelli and Arnaut Daniel
Two crowds of souls greet each other in the fire, and the greatest poets of love in two languages speak.
Canto Twenty-Seven
Through the Fire — Virgil's Farewell
Dante must walk through a wall of flame, and on the other side, his guide of thirty-three cantos speaks his last words.
Part Three
The Earthly Paradise
Cantos XXVIII – XXXIII
The summit of the mountain: Eden as it was before the Fall, now a garden where the purified soul stands at the threshold of Heaven. Here Virgil departs, and Beatrice arrives. The canticle ends in flight toward the stars.
Canto Twenty-Eight
The Earthly Paradise — Matelda
A forest of eternal spring, a river no one can cross, and a singing woman who walks among the flowers.
Canto Twenty-Nine
The Processional of Scripture
A blaze of light moves through the forest — a triumph of the Church and Word of God that overwhelms the senses.
Canto Thirty
Beatrice Appears — Virgil Vanishes
The woman Dante has spent a lifetime reaching finally stands before him — and she is not pleased.
Canto Thirty-One
Dante's Confession — The River Lethe
Beatrice forces a full confession, and Dante is submerged in forgetting before he can look upon her face unveiled.
Canto Thirty-Two
The Tree of Empire — The Allegory of Church History
The chariot is tied to a withered tree that bursts into bloom, and then — in a dark dream — is corrupted beyond recognition.
Canto Thirty-Three
The Prophecy of DXV — The River Eunoe — Flight to the Stars
Beatrice speaks a prophecy no one can fully decode, Dante drinks the water of memory, and the canticle ends in readiness for Heaven.