tudies of the reception and “afterlife” of classic works are becoming something of a trend. Last year, Orlando Reade’s What in Me Is Dark received well-earned praise for its tracking of the surprising career of Milton’s Paradise Lost in the centuries following its composition – not least its role in shaping a revolutionary political imagination.

Dante’s Commedia (or Divine Comedy, written in the opening decades of the 14th century) is already a heavily and explicitly political text, in which the poet at times exhibits a positively Trumpian relish in imagining the defeat and torment of his enemies. But its long-term reception is about a great deal more than politics.