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1

Circe and Rome. The Origin of the Legend

100%

Zalewska-Jura H.

Studia Ceranea

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2018

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vol. 8

77-87

EN

Circe is associated first of all with the episode narrated in the 10th book of the Odyssey, in which she turns Odysseus’s crewmen into pigs using her herbal pharmaka. Odysseus survives due to divine help, his inborn cleverness, and the miraculous herb moly. The fairy-tale theme of the spells of Circe, clearly showing its folk provenance, got entrenched in ancient literature: featured most often in poems of playful content, Circe symbolized the power to subjugate male souls and bodies. From the Hellenistic era to the Byzantine times, however, Circe is mentioned in scholarly works – in the context of the history of Roman Italy. The aim of the present article is, first of all, to analyse the Greek-language source texts and show the ways in which ancient authors managed to connect a character from a folk fairy tale – intrinsically different in form and not identifiable with any heroic myth – with the prehistory of Roman Italy, and even place her among the ancestors of Rome. The considerations also allow us to identify some of the mechanisms of the creation and functioning of the legend as a cultural phenomenon of the ancient world.

2

Odyssean Motifs in the Middle Comedy: Witches, Monsters and Courtesans

65%

Stuligrosz M.

Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium Graecae et Latinae

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2017

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vol. 27

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issue 2

EN

The purpose of this paper is to show how Middle Comedy authors re-work mythical motifs and characters borrowed from Homer’s epic poetry, inserting them into the various contexts of everyday life and imbuing them with new meaning. The analysis focuses on the fragments of plays by Anaxilas and Ephippus, which draw on the motif of animal transformation and of Odysseus’ encounter with Circe and mythical monsters.

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Ulisse all’Isola di Circe (Brussels 1650): Operatic Transformation of Classical Tradition and Dissolution of Stoic Problems

63%

Urbański P.

Werkwinkel

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2015

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vol. 10

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issue 2

115-130

EN

The present article is a close reading of the libretto of the first opera (drama musicale) staged in the Netherlands, in Brussels in 1650. The main point of interest is Ascanio Amalteo’s transformation or even breakaway from the classical tradition (esp. Homer and Ovid) to create a work with its own message, quite distant from classical texts but, paradoxically, approaching moral and psychological categories in Neo-Stoic mode. Perhaps it is not by chance that a parallel piece, Calderon’s second play on Circe (after the fiesta entitled El mayor encanto, amor, 1635), i.e. the auto sacramentale entitled Los encantos de la culpa (ca. 1650), is also a significant transformation of the motive done in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. Both plays are the last allegorical interpretations of Circe myth and for the next two-hundred years the last important literary works about Ulysses.

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1 Studia Ceranea

1 Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium Graecae et Latinae

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1 Stuligrosz M.

1 Urbański P.

1 Zalewska-Jura H.

1 2018

1 2017

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Circe and Rome. The Origin of the Legend

Odyssean Motifs in the Middle Comedy: Witches, Monsters and Courtesans

Ulisse all’Isola di Circe (Brussels 1650): Operatic Transformation of Classical Tradition and Dissolution of Stoic Problems