Publisher's Synopsis
The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three cantiche Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso each consisting of 33 cantos. An initial canto, serving as an introduction to the poem and generally considered to be part of the first cantica, brings the total number of cantos to 100. It is generally accepted, however, that the first two cantos serve as a unitary prologue to the entire epic, and that the opening two cantos of each cantica serve as prologues to each of the three cantiche.The number three is prominent in the work, represented in part by the number of cantiche and their lengths. Additionally, the verse scheme used, terza rima, is hendecasyllabic, with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded, The total number of syllables in each tercet is thus 33, the same as the number of cantos in each cantica.
