- A South African Convivio with Dante
- Edited by Sonia Fanucchi, Anita Virga
The Unattainable South African Paradise
- Anita Virga
- © 2021 Author(s) |
- CC BY 4.0
- DOI: 10.36253/978-88-5518-458-8.09
Whether Dante was part of a hegemonic discourse or a counter one, he helped to shape identities, create new ones, re-imagined old ones. However, for these young South African students whose contributions are collected in this book Paradise as a place of the future seems to remain an unattainable mirage. For them South Africa is locked in a present which cannot overcome its past and cannot imagine its future; an eternal Purgatory, which ironically enough for Dante is the only non-eternal place of the afterlife.
- Keywords:
- Dante in South Africa,
- Dante's Purgatorio,
- Post-Apatheid South Africa,
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa - ORCID: 0000-0002-7600-4919
- Alighieri, Dante. 1986. The Divine Comedy. Hell, edited by Steve Ellis. New York: Pinguin.
- Audeh, Aida, Havely, Nick. 2012. Dante in the Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity, and Appropriation. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Barnard, Rita, van der Vlies, Andrew. edited by. 2019. South African Writing in Transition. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
- Benjamin, Walter. 1969. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn, 253–64. New York: Schocken Books.
- Higgs, Philip. 2016. “The African renaissance and the transformation of the higher education curriculum in South Africa.” Africa Education Review 13 (1): 87–101. DOI: 10.1080/18146627.2016.1186370
- Looney, Dennis. 2011. Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
- Mandela, Nelson. 1995. Long Walk to Freedom. New York: Back Bay Books.
- Nuttall, Sarah, Coetzee, Carli. edited by. 1998. Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press Southern Africa.
- Oyedemi, Toks Dele. 2021. “Postcolonial casualties: ‘Born-frees’ and decolonisation in South Africa.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 39 (2): 214–29. DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2020.1864305
- Pirandello, Luigi. 2004. The Late Mattia Pascal, introduction by Charles Simic, translated from the Italian by William Weaver. New York: NYRB.
- Qureshi, Sadiah. 2004. “Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Hottentot Venus’.” History of Science 42 (2): 233–57.
- Walder, Dennis. 2011. Postcolonial Nostalgias. Writing, Representation, and Memory. New York: Routledge.
Chapter Information
Chapter Title
The Unattainable South African Paradise
Authors
Anita Virga
Language
English
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-458-8.09
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