HYPERMEDI EVALIZING AND DE-MEDI EVALIZING DANTE: LEOPOLDO LUGONES’S AND JORGE LUIS BORGES’S REWRITINGS OF INFERNO V

DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY is widely considered to be one of the most emblematic works of the Middle Ages—a work that seemingly encompasses the medieval worldview in its depiction of the afterlife and whose influence reverberated through the centuries and, geo graphically, far beyond Western Europe. In this chapter, I examine two twentieth-century Argentine adaptations of one of the most famous episodes of the Comedy—the story of Francesca da Rimini in Canto V of Inferno. Both Leopoldo Lugones and Jorge Luis Borges, two authors intent on developing Argentine national literature, wrote innovative adaptations of the tale. While Lugones accentuates