Harpies

The article focuses on the topic of Greek and Roman influences on His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. The author presents the ancient origins of several motifs of the trilogy, for example compares the daemon from His Dark Materials to the ancient daimon, Lyra’s dream in a cave to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the Pullman’s vision of the Underworld to Greek Hades, and the Subtle Knife to the golden bough. She also tries to understand the function of the Greek and Roman elements in the trilogy. Finally, the author ponders if the vision of ancient culture in His Dark Materials can influence its reception in the future.

Atti del Convegno, Bologna, 8-10 ottobre 2018. Cucina, società e Politica. Le arti e il cibo. Modalità ed esempi di un rapporto. A cura di Fabrizio Lollini e Massimo Montanari.

Per l'intervento al convegno vedi:
https://www.academia.edu/37429423/LECTURES_Pasti_funesti_Fineo_e_Tieste_storie_di_banchetti_punitivi_nel_mito_greco_Bologna_9_October_2018_h_16_30_

Argues that the language Vergil uses to describe the Harpies in Aeneid 3 is ambiguous, and that he may be not only stressing the theme of hunger but also alluding to the imagery used in ancient accounts of menstruation, playing off the ancient conception of the female body as abnormal and polluted, and thus as inherently monstrous. Looks specifically at the phrase "foedissima ventris / proluvies" (3.216-27), among others.

Andrea del Sarto's "Madonna of the Harpies" and the Human-Animal Hybrid in the Renaissance The misleading title, quoted above, that has long been associated with Andrea del Sarto's Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and John the Evangelist (signed on the pedestal and dated 1517) (Fig.79) derives from Vasari's description in the Vite of 1550. Thirtythree years after the painting was completed and twenty years after the artist's death, Vasari wrote: 'in una tavola per la chiesa di dette monache [di S. Francesco in via Pentolini], la Nostra Donna ritta e rilevata sopra una base di otto faccie: in sulle cantonate della quale sono alcune arpie che seggono quasi adorando la vergine'. The present study will clarify the function of these eccentric creatures in the iconography of the altarpiece, based on relevant literary and artistic precedents where hybrid creatures are featured in sacred iconography, comparisons in contemporary Italian art, and evidence related to the patronage of a women's monastic community.

Roman poets of the Augustan period reinvented monsters from Greek myth, such as Harpies, Furies, and the warring Centaurs and Giants. These monsters represented the attractions and dangers of novelty in various contexts, ranging from social values to artistic innovation. Rome's two great epics of the early principate, Vergil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, are both filled with mythical monsters. Like the culture that produced them, these poets were fascinated by unfamiliar forms despite their potential to disturb and disrupt. This book takes a fresh approach to the canonical works of Vergil, Ovid, and their contemporaries, contributing to a very recent turn toward marvels, monsters, and deformity in classical studies. The volume proposes that monstrosity was acutely topical during the birth of the principate, having featured in aesthetic debates of the Hellenistic age, while also serving as an established, if controversial, means for public figures to amaze the population and display their power. Monsters provided a fantastical means to explore attitudes toward human nature, especially in its relationship with sex. They also symbolized deformations of poetic form. Such gestures were doomed to replay the defeat of hypermasculine monsters yet, paradoxically, they legitimized poetic innovation. Monsters and Monstrosity in Augustan Poetry is the first full-length study of monsters in Augustan poetry, and the first metapoetic readingof monstrosity in classical antiquity. Intended primarily for scholars and students of classical Latin literature, it will also speak to interdisciplinary monster studies. It does not require knowledge of Latin or ancient Greek and quotations are translated.

Resumo: O imaginário medieval é cheio de elementos mitológicos antigos que foram agregados pelo pensamento, seja devido à resistência, seja devido ao movimento de herança atrelado às suas presenças. A Commedia de Dante possui presentificações do passado atrelados à imagem mental e, portanto, presentes no imaginário medieval. A presença alegórica dos seres híbridos ou guardiões do Inferno, primeira parte da obra, é realizada de acordo com a intertextualidade dos poetas latinos que foram autorictas de Dante. Porém, o poeta também estava inserido no contexto em que os animais e híbridos remetiam aos vestígios de presenças divinas associadas ao comportamento humano, enquanto sinais da sua figuração no pós-morte ou da forma como a justiça divina se organizava. O intuito deste artigo é investigar a revelação figural das harpias presentificadas no segundo giro do sétimo círculo do inferno descrito na Commedia: Inferno, enquanto punidoras das almas dos suicidas. A análise se concentra na presença dos poetas antigos enquanto pré-figuração, na figuração poética de Dante e no imaginário medieval, como é o caso de suas presenças em esculturas e em bestiários. Palavras-chave: Harpias. Commedia. Presença. Abstract: The medieval imaginary is full of ancient mythological elements that were aggregated by thought due to resistance and the inheritance movement linked to their presence. Dante's Commedia has such past presentification tied to the mental image and thus present in the medieval imaginary. The allegorical presence of the hybrid beings or guardians of Dante's Inferno, the first part of the work, is made according to the intertextuality of the latin poets who were Dante's autoritas. However, the poet was also inserted in the context in which animals and hybrids referred to vestiges of divine presences associated with human behavior, as signs of its postmortem figuration or the way divine justice was organized. The aim of this paper is to investigate the figural revelation of harpies presented in the second level of the seventh circle of hell described in Commedia: Inferno, as punichers of the souls of suicides. The analysis will focus on the presence of ancient poets as pre-figuration, on Dante's poetic figuration and on the medieval imaginary, as in the case with their presence in sculpures and bestiaries.

Argues that the language Vergil uses to describe the Harpies in Aeneid 3 is ambiguous, and that he may be not only stressing the theme of hunger but also alluding to the imagery used in ancient accounts of menstruation, playing off the ancient conception of the female body as abnormal and polluted, and thus as inherently monstrous. Looks specifically at the phrase "foedissima ventris / proluvies" (3.216-27), among others.

"This book is about the many part-human mythological hybrids in late first century Roman culture. Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses are the central texts. The first chapter discusses 'monster studies' and attitudes towards monstrous forms, both then and now; the second discusses abnormal bodies outside myth (distant races, religious prodigies, deformed humans); the next two address female monsters and the last two male ones.
Contents:
1: Monster Theory
2: Real Monsters
3: Feminine Exteriors
4: Feminine Interiors
5: Beast-Men
6: Hyperbolic Monsters"