'Dante's Long Australian Shadow'

Abstract

On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, this chapter surveys Dante's influence on Australian poets from the mid-nineteenth century up to the present day. The chapter places a special emphasis on how these authors' negotiations and appropriations of Dante's ideas of sin, redemption and purity of motives shaped their literary approaches to Australian social justice and the redress of the ecological and social problems of colonialism.