The paper will examine the reworking of the myth of Orpheus by Notker III of St. Gallen in his annotated translation of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae. As is well known, the myth of Orpheus has spanned all ages from antiquity to the present day and represents one of the greatest and most important cycles of European culture. Over the centuries, each epoch has moulded its own image of Orpheus and given the myth new attributes and elements at the expense of others, some of which have been emphasized, others eliminated, and new invented in order to adapt the figure of Orpheus to the values of those times. The myth of Orpheus is not static or immutable; on the contrary, its strength lies in its adaptability over time. A vast repertoire of elements is therefore available that form a whole that can be summarized under the label “Myth of Orpheus”. In 1997 S. Sonderegger published an essay on Orpheus in Notker, mainly focused on the problem of sentence structure, alliteration and stylization of the final rhyme – all aspects of style, completely neglecting the interesting content aspects of Notker’s reworking. In fact, if Boethius was the first Latin author to develop an ethical allegory of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the doctissimus magister of St. Gall fits in an original way into the multi-faceted Christian reinterpretation of the myth, which in the Germanic linguistic area had begun with the translation into Anglo-Saxon, commonly attributed to King Alfred the Great of Wessex (end of the ninth century). The proposed analysis will deal with the reworking of the myth of Orpheus in Notker: the interpretations of ancient mythology (Tantalus, Titius, the Danaids, Sysyphus); the figure of Eurydice, the role of quotations from classical literature (Virgil’s Eclogues) and from the Gospel of Luke 9:62, the points of contact – until now escaped even the best critics – between the poem of Orpheus and the central poem III, IX of the Consolatio, the (possible) use of commentaries (“Anonymous of St. Gall” and Remigius)
IL MITO DI ORFEO NELL’OPERA DI NOTKER III DI SAN GALLO (CON UNO SGUARDO ALL’INDIETRO ALLA TRADUZIONE DI ALFREDO IL GRANDE)
Verio Santoro
2025
Abstract
The paper will examine the reworking of the myth of Orpheus by Notker III of St. Gallen in his annotated translation of Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae. As is well known, the myth of Orpheus has spanned all ages from antiquity to the present day and represents one of the greatest and most important cycles of European culture. Over the centuries, each epoch has moulded its own image of Orpheus and given the myth new attributes and elements at the expense of others, some of which have been emphasized, others eliminated, and new invented in order to adapt the figure of Orpheus to the values of those times. The myth of Orpheus is not static or immutable; on the contrary, its strength lies in its adaptability over time. A vast repertoire of elements is therefore available that form a whole that can be summarized under the label “Myth of Orpheus”. In 1997 S. Sonderegger published an essay on Orpheus in Notker, mainly focused on the problem of sentence structure, alliteration and stylization of the final rhyme – all aspects of style, completely neglecting the interesting content aspects of Notker’s reworking. In fact, if Boethius was the first Latin author to develop an ethical allegory of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the doctissimus magister of St. Gall fits in an original way into the multi-faceted Christian reinterpretation of the myth, which in the Germanic linguistic area had begun with the translation into Anglo-Saxon, commonly attributed to King Alfred the Great of Wessex (end of the ninth century). The proposed analysis will deal with the reworking of the myth of Orpheus in Notker: the interpretations of ancient mythology (Tantalus, Titius, the Danaids, Sysyphus); the figure of Eurydice, the role of quotations from classical literature (Virgil’s Eclogues) and from the Gospel of Luke 9:62, the points of contact – until now escaped even the best critics – between the poem of Orpheus and the central poem III, IX of the Consolatio, the (possible) use of commentaries (“Anonymous of St. Gall” and Remigius)I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
