A transmedia Commedia: The view from Dante Today

The crowdsourced digital archive Dante Today catalogues the adaptations and appropriations of Dante’s works across contemporary global cultures. Collectively, the 2000+ artefacts showcase the various ways that contemporary authors and artists engage in a transhistorical dialogue with Dante. This dialogue takes shape across multiple media: from novels and comics to visual and performing arts, advertisements and album covers to memes and street art. In addition to presenting a few choice artefacts from the archive’s film and television holdings, the article offers a reflection on the Commedia’s transmediality, asking whether it is possible to read the Commedia today without the illustrations, extensions, memes and remixes we have documented in the Dante Today archive.