The Reception of Apuleius in Italian Theatre and Cinema

What is it about?

The article aims to reconstruct the intersemiotic translation processes from the pages of Apuleian works to the contemporary languages of theatre and cinema. We will start from the theatrical adaptation of the "De magia" (1960, director: Renzo Giovampietro) by the famous philologist and Latinist Francesco della Corte, who proves to be, in this case, also an excellent writer (enriching the script, among other things, with valuable ironic jokes): we will analyze the inevitable reductive and transpositional processes at the center of this brilliant operation. The first transcodification of Apuleius on the big screen is instead found in "Fellini Satyricon" (1969): the filmmaker contaminates his version of Petronius' work with a rewriting of the episode of the feast of the god Risus taken from the Metamorphoses. Continuing in chronological order, the analysis will focus on the screenplay (written by Sergio Spina and Alfredo Maria Tucci) of the film "The Golden Ass" (1970), another interesting piece of contemporary understanding of Apuleius: the screenwriters' choices range from the relatively faithful transposition of some passages to modifications that fall within numerous forms of hypertextual strategies. We will try as well to identify the 'ratio' of several substantial diegetic changes that appear to distort Apuleius's hypotext but often highlight its Leitmotive and distinctive traits. At the end of this excursus, we will give an account of the amusing - but nonetheless complex - theatrical transposition of the Metamorphoses realized in 1996 by Paolo Poli (out of the interpreters, among other things, of the previous movie).

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Why is it important?

Our analysis witnesses the great attention tributed by all-round Italian culture to this author since the second half of last century.

Perspectives