Cristiana Roffi of the University of Trento is visiting the Center to work on her project, " Recasting Ovid in Modern Germany: the game of gaze in Jörg Wickram’s Metamorphoses."  This project investigates the rescript of Narcissus and Pentheus episodes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses as published in 1545 by German author Jörg Wickram (met. III, 339-510 / W. III, 840-1239; met. III, 511-733 / W. III, 1240-1416). Such text is a remake of Albrecht von Halberstadt’s corrupted work dating back to the late 12th and early 13th century of which only five fragments survived. Wickram’s transcript will be analyzed in depth, in order to discredit the alleged decline of classical humanism in 16th century Germany and examining the role of antiquity in the genesis of modern cultural identities, overcoming the highly compartmentalized way studies in antiquity have been conducted in the past. Furthermore, this study’s purpose is an attempt to examine the historical background in which Wickram’s poem was written. Additionally, it could also be of some significance to consider the commentary on Wickram’s Metamorphoses written by by Gerhard Lorichius, a 16th century priest of the city of Hadamar (Hessen), provides meaningful insights of the first German example of moralization of the Metamorphoses, in the wake of French tradition. In fact, Lorichius ennobled Wickram’s translation, even if he might not have known Wickram’s text while he was writing the so-called Außlegungen (‘interpretations’). Included in Roloff’s modern edition (1990), which followed the 1545 editio princeps of the text (A) and contains the 1551 edition (B) in apparatus, Lorichius’s commentary tries to explain the Latin fabulae in a Christian prospective. As a result, the commentator illustrates pagan mythology omitting and defusing Ovid’s representation of ‘indecencies’.

Please help us welcome Cristiana to Ohio State!