About this item

Three thousand years of visions of Hell, from the ancient Near East to modern AmericaFrom the Hebrew Bible's shadowy realm of Sheol to twenty-first-century visions of Hell on earth, The Penguin Book of Hell takes us through three thousand years of eternal damnation. Along the way, you'll take a ferry ride with Aeneas to Hades, across the river Acheron; meet the Devil as imagined by a twelfth-century Irish monk--a monster with a thousand giant hands; wander the nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno, in which gluttons, liars, heretics, murderers, and hypocrites are made to endure crime-appropriate torture; and witness the debates that raged in Victorian England when new scientific advances cast doubt on the idea of an eternal hereafter. Drawing upon religious poetry, epics, theological treatises, stories of miracles, and accounts of saints' lives, this fascinating volume of hellscapes illuminates how Hell has long haunted us, in both life and death.



About the Author

Scott G. Bruce

SGB (Ph.D. Princeton University, 2000) teaches medieval history at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. A scholar of the history of Christianity in the Middle Ages, SGB has written widely on the frontiers of the monastic imagination in premodern Europe. His books treat a diverse range of topics in medieval religious and cultural history, from monastic sign language to European perceptions of Islam in the Middle Ages. He has edited three historical anthologies for Penguin Classics: The Penguin Book of the Undead (2016) ; The Penguin Book of Hell (2018) ; and most recently The Penguin Book of Dragons (2021) . For updates about his book projects and links to social media, please visit http://www.medievalimagination.com.



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