The third and final canticle (set of cantos) in Dante’s “holy poem,” The Divine Comedy (in Italian, the Commedia), the Paradiso follows Dante and Beatrice as they ascend through heaven, meeting figures like Thomas Aquinas, Mary, and Adam. Like the Inferno and the Purgatorio, it allegorizes Dante’s spiritual journey, but rather than focus on punishment, penitence, and the correction of Dante’s will, the Paradiso focuses largely on the correction of Dante’s intellect as Dante and his beloved Beatrice ascend through the nine spheres of heaven. The canticle not only shows Dante’s deep theological knowledge, but it also shows his poetic range, as stunning imagery mixes with dialogue that would fit well in a theological treatise. The canticle is literally heavenly.
Paradiso was written over a long period after the Purgatorio was published; Dante worked on it up until his death in 1321. Critics like John Hollander have supposed that it may have been unfinished, as certain textual features suggest that Dante may have intended to have the poem undergo a final revision. Marco Santagata proposes that he completed a large portion of the text in exile in Lucca, Italy, and worked on it in Verona from 1316 to either 1318 or 1320, when he moved to Ravenna to continue working but soon died. At the time of his death, Paradiso was still unpublished; when it found publication, the Commedia as a whole achieved widespread renown.
It was from this point that Dante became the venerated poet he is today. The Paradiso may not be as delightfully horrifying as the Inferno, but it closes out the Commedia with a “comic” and beautiful ending, showing that Dante's capacity for the representation of joy meets (or perhaps exceeds) his ability to represent horror. Without the joyful meeting of Dante and the divine—without the Paradiso—the Commedia would not be a Commedia at all. The poem’s influence ripples throughout history: Angelica Frey has discussed its influence on art history, the British newspaper The Guardian has recently discussed its relevance to contemporary politics, and Dante’s paradisiacal vision remains a powerfully imagined form of the Christian heaven.
