Retellings From The Middle Ages To Modern Times
Giovanni Boccaccio provided a digest of what was known of Circe during the Middle Ages in his De claris mulieribus (Famous Women, 1361-1362). While following the tradition that she lived in Italy, he comments wryly that there are now many more temptresses like her to lead men astray.
There is a very different interpretation of the encounter with Circe in John Gower's long didactic poem Confessio Amantis (1380). Ulysses is depicted as deeper in sorcery and readier of tongue than Circe and through this means leaves her pregnant with Telegonus. Most of the account deals with the son's later quest for and accidental killing of his father, drawing the moral that only evil can come of the use of sorcery.
The story of Ulysses and Circe was retold as an episode in Georg Rollenhagen's German verse epic, Froschmeuseler (The frogs and mice, Magdeburg, 1595). In this 600-page expansion of the pseudo-Homeric Batrachomyomachia, it is related at the court of the mice and takes up sections 5-8 of the first part.
In Lope de Vega's miscellany La Circe - con otras rimas y prosas (Madrid 1624), the story of her encounter with Ulysses appears as a verse epic in three cantos. This takes its beginning from Homer’s account, but it is then embroidered; in particular, Circe’s love for Ulysses remains unrequited.
As "Circe's Palace", Nathaniel Hawthorne retold the Homeric account as the third section in his collection of stories from Greek mythology, Tanglewood Tales (1853). The transformed Picus continually appears in this, trying to warn Ullyses, and then Eurylochus, of the danger to be found in the palace, and is rewarded at the end by being given back his human shape. In most accounts Ulysses only demands this for his own men.
The Circe episode also figures in film adaptations of the Odyssey. The character was played by Silvana Mangano in the US production, Ullyses (1955); by Juliette Mayniel in the European television co-production L'Odissea (1968); and by Bernadette Peters in the American TV feature Ulysses (1997). In addition, the 2003 Radio Tales drama "Homer's Odyssey: Voyage to the Underworld" retells the portion of Homer's epic featuring Circe, followed by the voyage to Hades to consult with Tiresias.
Read more about this topic: Circe
Famous quotes containing the words middle, ages, modern and/or times:
“There’s no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn’t invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II½. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it’s possible.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“I have inspected the accommodations and find them entirely satisfactory, and as for those young men, who are of appropriate ages to be my grandsons, they will not trouble me in the least.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or unconscious behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis than the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our Friends’ thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)