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I've read the entire thing and I studied it as a philosophical text. It is one of the most beautiful and brilliant things I've ever read. What most people who study it from a literary standpoint miss is the actual concepts and philosophical tradition that Dante is explaining through his prose. He first begins to write it after he is exiled from his native Florence, he likely intended it to be a means of justifiying himself to his peers back in Florence in hopes of being allowed to return, that never happened though. Once, you get to one of the final canto's of paradise right before Dante is about to see God. He actually pauses to say to the reader that if that have not had any education in the philosophy and history that he has then they should not read any further, lest they be destroyed by the awesome power of God.
If anybody is looking for a good translation to get into I suggest the penguin classics trans. Dorothy L. Sayers. She has some really good notes in there that detail a lot of what Dante is talking about. Sayers is pretty cool to she was amongst the Tolkien and T.S. Elliot circle of scholars at Oxford.
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