Reflections of Inferno in Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills:An Intertextual Reading

This paper attempts to define the eclectic and structural nature of Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills by examining how the novel’s intertextual reading spurs on to accomplish its final textual integrity. And also, it addresses the African American desire for recreating a black version of the American dream and the resultant destructive effects and the fragmentation of their psyche which forms the crux of the novel. Naylor evolves Linden Hills based on Part I of Dante’s epic poem The Divine Comedy (1321) titled The Inferno. Like Dante and Virgil in The Inferno, the dual protagonists of this novel Willie Mason and Lester Tilson, the young poets, are left to ponder over the journey to gain insight into human failings or undergo a significant revelation. The implementation of intertextuality spotlights the similarity between the existing text and the more established classical texts taken for analysis. The model text helps to unravel the aesthetic, philosophical and thematic quality of the text and also engenders their related successful associations.