Transnational Dante

This book examines Dante’s afterlife in Argentina in selected works by Bartolomé Mitre, Leopoldo Lugones, Jorge Luis Borges, and Leopoldo Marechal. My analysis is informed by the theories of Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, and Nicolas Shumway, who coined the concepts of “invented traditions,” “imagined communities,” and “guiding fictions” respectively. I have applied these notions to the case of Argentina, which after the War of Independence from Spain (1810–1818) had to develop its own national cultural identity. In Chapters 1–2, I examine Bartolomé Mitre’s 1897 translation of the Divine Comedy. I have found Mitre’s reading of Dante to have important resonances with the readings of Risorgimento Italians such as Mazzini who associated Dante with political unity, morality, and high culture. Chapters 3–5 are dedicated to Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1938) and Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) and their re-writings of the Vth Canto of Inferno. I also examine Borges’s “The Aleph,” which, I argue, is not only a parody of the Divine Comedy, but also a subtle critique of Lugones in the figure of Carlos Daneri. In Chapters 6–8 I evidence how in Adán Buenosayres (1948) Leopoldo Marechal employs Dante to parody the viewpoints of many of Argentina’s intellectual elite (including Borges) on Argentine literature and identity. I conclude that the Divine Comedy, a work widely acknowledged to have played a key role in the emergence of Italian national consciousness, was an important font of inspiration for several major Argentine authors concerned with developing Argentine national literature.