Orwell's Commedia: The Ironic Theology of Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) begins with one of the most famous opening lines in English literature. Apart from capturing the reader's attention with its sinister peculiarity, this sentence does two things-though admittedly not at first sight. It undermines the veracity of t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Modern philology 2013-05, Vol.110 (4), p.536-563
Main Author:	Hunt, William
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	'Orwell, George' (Eric Blair) Alighieri, Dante (1265-1321) Authors Christian Theology Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321 Dreams English Literature Genette, Gerard (1930-2018) Hypertext Influence Intertextuality Irony Literary criticism Nineteen Eighty-Four Novels Orwell, George (Eric Blair) (1903-1950) Twentieth Century Writers
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Summary:	George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) begins with one of the most famous opening lines in English literature. Apart from capturing the reader's attention with its sinister peculiarity, this sentence does two things-though admittedly not at first sight. It undermines the veracity of the narrative that follows, and it gestures toward the Christian Middle Ages. To borrow the terms made fashionable by Gerard Genette, here, Hunt stresses that Nineteen Eighty-Four must be read as a "hypertext," keyed to the "hypotext" of Dante Alighieri's Commedia. He argues that a more symbolic and hypertextual reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four is essential if readers are able to read it intelligibly.
ISSN:	0026-8232 1545-6951