The System of Dante’s Hell (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Amiri Baraka
- First Published: 1965
- Type of Plot: Autobiographical fiction
- Time of Work: The indistinguishable past and present
- Setting: The literal Inferno of the Ghetto, the psychological Hell of the narrator’s experience
- Principal Characters: The Narrator
- Genres: Long fiction, Autobiographical fiction
- Subjects: African Americans, Self-discovery, Twentieth century, Literature, Sin or Original sin, Armed forces
- Locales: Hell
The Novel
The System of Dante’s Hell is a loosely arranged prose poem, autobiographical insofar as it presents projections drawn from its author’s experiences. Baraka chooses to call it “Dante’s Hell” because he believes that what has caused him to “sin,” what has enchained his spirit, derives essentially from the Western intellectual and artistic tradition in which he received his education. These have left him somewhere between black and white cultures, accepted by neither and estranged from both.
Western culture attracts him intellectually, yet it...
[The entire page is 2316 words long]
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