Dismembered Voices and Acoustic Memories: Dante in Giulio Cesare Croce

This essay aims to explore the presence of Dante’s Commedia within the writings of the Bolognese cantastorie Giulio Cesare Croce. A preliminary assessment of the hybrid social and cultural status of Croce is followed by a close reading of passages of some of his works. The echoes of Dante’s poem are contextualized in the wider picture of its reception in Bologna in the second half of the sixteenth century. A further aim is to offer a preliminary enquiry into the immense, but nonetheless largely evanescent, oral transmission of the Commedia through the specific lens of the poetic culture and production of a semi-cultivated street singer and poet.