ABSTRACT
Dante Alighieri's Paradiso Terrestre (the last six cantos of the Purgatorio) is much more explicitly Christian than Shakespeare's Tempest. In The Tempest there are no references to Christianity, and though it is as religious as the Paradiso Terrestre its religion is represented only in the attitudes of the characters, especially Prospero's, and not in any visible symbols of Christian belief. The Paradiso Terrestre is the earthly end of Dante's whole journey from the darkness of Hell to his Christian heaven; The Tempestis a romance, like Shakespeare's other late plays; and it is presented lightly, as make-believe: we are free to take or to leave its deeper meanings. It is the lyric beauty of The Tempest and also of much of the Paradiso Terrestre that is most striking at first, and it is the lyricism that primarily attracted Pound and Eliot when they were seeking nourishment for their own poetry.
