From the back flap:
How does the form of Dante's Commedia bear witness to the poet's claim to have seen God and lived? More important: how does the poem aid the charitable aims of such a poet toward his reader? Somehow the poem is called upon to transcend its own beauty in order to help man overcome a cupidinous preoccupation with created goods.
In a series of five essays treating episodes from the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, Professor Chiampi offers a response to these ethical and esthetic questions based upon the notion of conversion. According to Professor Chiampi, the poem seeks to evoke from its reader a renewal of spiritual vision which would lead him to understand all things - the poem included - in relation to God. Thus, the reader is gradually schooled in the correct use of the poem as he grows in the love of God. To further this redirection of the will, the Commedia offers an immanent apologia by calling attention to its own structure, a structure created in imitation of the Logos.