Il Dante di Emilio Giannelli: attualità, iconicità, didascalismo
abstract
This essay offers a reading of a few recent satirical vignettes drawn by Emilio Giannelli for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and uses them as a springboard to analyse long-standing trends in the active reception of Dante in Italian culture. It argues that the actualizing, iconizing, and didascalic vein in which the ‘imagination’ of the Divine Comedy has been cast since the beginning of its circulation has contributed to the poem’s vitality in popular culture even today. In this sense, it suggests that the comic-book versions of the Comedy do not betray, but rather conform to the popular quality of Dante’s project and its immediate reception.
Keywords: Corriere della Sera • Commedia • Newspaper • Emilio Giannelli • Dante