- A South African Convivio with Dante
- Edited by Sonia Fanucchi, Anita Virga
“Experience that Generates Experience”: The Influence of the Comedy in three South African Writings
- Marco Medugno
- © 2021 Author(s) |
- CC BY 4.0
- DOI: 10.36253/978-88-5518-458-8.08
This article aims to explore the intertextual relationships between Dante’s Divine Comedy and three pieces of creative writing: Chariklia Martalas’ “A Mad Flight into Inferno Once Again”, Thalén Rogers’ “The Loadstone” and Helena van Urk’s “The Storm”. By employing a comparative analysis, I argue that, even though decontextualised, the Comedy still represents a fruitful aesthetic source for representing particularly war-torn and violent contexts such as South Africa during apartheid and colonialism. I explore how the authors, through intertextual references and parodic rewriting, both re-configure the poem and challenge some of the Comedy’s moral assumptions and the idea of (divine) justice. I aim to show how Dantean Hell, far from being an otherworldly realm, is in fact transfigured and adapted to effectively represent (and make sense of) a historical context. In other words, through an intertextual analysis, this analysis tries to understand why and how the Comedy resonates with the South African socio-political (and literary) context.
- Keywords:
- intertextuality,
- justice,
- apartheid,
- colonialism,
- Inferno,
- Purgatory,
- re-writing,
Newcastle University, United Kingdom - ORCID: 0000-0001-8986-8268
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Chapter Information
Chapter Title
“Experience that Generates Experience”: The Influence of the Comedy in three South African Writings
Authors
Marco Medugno
Language
English
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-458-8.08
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2021
Copyright Information
© 2021 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Bibliographic Information
Book Title
A South African Convivio with Dante
Book Subtitle
Born Frees’ Interpretations of the Commedia
Editors
Sonia Fanucchi, Anita Virga
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
212
Publication Year
2021
Copyright Information
© 2021 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-458-8
ISBN Print
978-88-5518-457-1
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-5518-458-8
Series Title
Studi e saggi
Series ISSN
2704-6478
Series E-ISSN
2704-5919