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The Unattainable South African Paradise

  • Anita Virga

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,
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Anita Virga

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa - ORCID: 0000-0002-7600-4919

  1. Alighieri, Dante. 1986. The Divine Comedy. Hell, edited by Steve Ellis. New York: Pinguin.
  2. Audeh, Aida, Havely, Nick. 2012. Dante in the Long Nineteenth Century: Nationality, Identity, and Appropriation. New York: Oxford University Press.
  3. Barnard, Rita, van der Vlies, Andrew. edited by. 2019. South African Writing in Transition. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
  4. Benjamin, Walter. 1969. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn, 253–64. New York: Schocken Books.
  5. 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
  6. Looney, Dennis. 2011. Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
  7. Mandela, Nelson. 1995. Long Walk to Freedom. New York: Back Bay Books.
  8. Nuttall, Sarah, Coetzee, Carli. edited by. 1998. Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press Southern Africa.
  9. 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
  10. Pirandello, Luigi. 2004. The Late Mattia Pascal, introduction by Charles Simic, translated from the Italian by William Weaver. New York: NYRB.
  11. Qureshi, Sadiah. 2004. “Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Hottentot Venus’.” History of Science 42 (2): 233–57.
  12. Walder, Dennis. 2011. Postcolonial Nostalgias. Writing, Representation, and Memory. New York: Routledge.
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  • Publication Year: 2021
  • Pages: 143-151
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2021 Author(s)

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  • Publication Year: 2021
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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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

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

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

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

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

211

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