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Dante in Mogadishu: The Divine Comedy in Nuruddin Farah’s Links

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Marco MedugnoORCiD

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Abstract

This article aims to explore the complex network of intra-textual and intertextual references to Dante's The Divine Comedy in Nuruddin Farah's novel Links (2005). By analyzing the quotations from the poem, this essay wishes to show how the Comedy informs the novel at various levels, from the paratext (since Dante's tercets from Inferno are chosen as an epigraph) to the text itself (since Inferno appears to be deeply constitutive of Links). The analysis then suggests that, on the one hand, Farah employs Dante's poem to address, represent and understand the civil-war context of Somalia from the protagonist's point of view. On the other, he subverts and re-contextualizes Inferno to create new meanings and to distance his novel from Dante's literary antecedent. Therefore, by analyzing the practices of intertextuality between the two texts, this essay aims to investigate both the converging and conflicting strategies enabled in the novel.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Medugno M

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde

Year: 2020

Volume: 5

Issue: 1

Pages: 45-55

Online publication date: 21/04/2020

Acceptance date: 04/07/2019

Date deposited: 10/01/2024

ISSN (print): 0041-476X

ISSN (electronic): 2309-9070

Publisher: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde Association

URL: https://doi.org/10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.57i1.8060

DOI: 10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.57i1.8060

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