ABSTRACT
The act of reading Dante Alighieri through the prism of Jorge Luis Borges and Joyce implies a radical rethinking of a Western tradition whose interpretative potential has been extended, affected, and reinvigorated by a complex process of literary transactions. This chapter examines the ubiquitous presence of Dante in the works of Borges and Joyce. It explores their respective meetings with the Florentine writer from a literary, historical, and biographical viewpoint. While Borges and Joyce shared a lifelong relationship with Dante, their respective meetings with the Italian poet differ considerably. In the prologue to his Nine Dantesque Essays Borges fantasizes about an Oriental library that contains an infinite panel of uncertain origin in which are depicted countless legends, thousands of characters, and myriad shapes and colours. Like most of Borges's translations and appropriations of existing texts, the process involved in 'The Aleph' is re-creative, radical, and, at times, irreverent.
