Editing Circe (section)

===Parallels and sequels===
Several Renaissance epics of the 16th century include lascivious sorceresses based on the Circe figure. These generally live in an isolated spot devoted to pleasure, to which lovers are lured and later changed into beasts. They include the following:
* Alcina in the ''[[Orlando Furioso]]'' (''Mad Roland,'' 1516, 1532) of [[Ludovico Ariosto]], set at the time of [[Charlemagne]]. Among its many sub-plots is the episode in which the [[Saracen]] champion Ruggiero is taken captive by the sorceress and has to be freed from her magic island.<ref>There is a translation on the [http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/615/pg615.html Gutenberg website].</ref>
* The lovers of Filidia in ''Il Tancredi'' (1632) by Ascanio Grandi (1567–1647) have been changed into monsters and are liberated by the virtuous Tancred.<ref>Merritt Y. Hughes, ''Spenser's Acrasia and the Circe of the Renaissance'', Journal of the History of Ideas IV. 4, 1943, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707165?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents p. 383]</ref>
* [[Armida]] in [[Torquato Tasso]]'s ''La Gerusalemme liberata'' (''[[Jerusalem Delivered]]'', 1566–1575, published 1580) is a Saracen sorceress sent by the infernal senate to sow discord among the [[Crusaders]] camped before Jerusalem, where she succeeds in changing a party of them into animals. Planning to assassinate the hero, Rinaldo, she falls in love with him instead and creates an enchanted garden where she holds him a lovesick prisoner who has forgotten his former identity.<ref>Edward Fairfax's 1600 translation is available at the [http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/392/pg392.html Gutenberg website].</ref>
* Acrasia in Edmund Spenser's ''Faerie Queene'', mentioned above, is a seductress of knights and holds them enchanted in her Bower of Bliss.

Later scholarship has identified elements from the character of both Circe and especially her fellow enchantress [[Medea]] as contributing to the development of the mediaeval legend of [[Morgan le Fay]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://encompass.eku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1464&context=etd|title=Masks of the Dark Goddess in Arthurian Literature: Origin and Evolution of Morgan le Fay|last=Shearer|first=John Christopher|publisher=Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond|year=2017}}</ref> In addition, it has been argued that the fairy [[Titania (A Midsummer Night's Dream)|Titania]] in [[William Shakespeare]]'s ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'' (1600) is an inversion of Circe.<ref>Paul A. Olson, Beyond a Common Joy: An Introduction to Shakespearean Comedy, University of Nebraska 2008, [https://books.google.com/books?id=_cJE15y9FmIC&dq=Titania%20%22Circe%22&pg=PA79 pp. 79–82].</ref> Titania (daughter of the [[Titan (mythology)|Titans]]) was a title by which the sorceress was known in Classical times. In this case the tables are turned on the character, who is queen of the fairies. She is made to love an ass after, rather than before, he is transformed into his true animal likeness.

[[File:Comus with his revellers.jpg|thumb|upright=1.05|[[William Blake]]'s 1815 watercolour of Comus and his animal-headed revellers|alt=|left]]

It has further been suggested that [[John Milton]]'s [[Comus (John Milton)|''Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle'']] (1634) is a sequel to ''[[Tempe Restored]],'' a masque in which Circe had figured two years earlier, and that the situation presented there is a reversal of the Greek myth.<ref>[[John G. Demaray]], "Milton's ''Comus:'' The Sequel to a Masque of Circe," ''Huntington Library Quarterly'' 29 (1966), pp. 245–54.</ref> At the start of the [[masque]], the character Comus is described as the son of Circe by [[Dionysus|Bacchus]], god of wine, and the equal of his mother in enchantment. He too changes travelers into beastly forms that "roll with pleasure in a sensual sty". Having waylaid the heroine and immobilized her on an enchanted chair, he stands over her, wand in hand, and presses on her a magical cup (representing sexual pleasure and intemperance), which she repeatedly refuses, arguing for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity.<ref>The text is on the [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19819/19819-h/19819-h.htm Gutenberg website].</ref> The picture presented is a mirror image of the Classical story. In place of the witch who easily seduces the men she meets, a male enchanter is resisted by female virtue.

In the 20th century, the Circe episode was to be re-evaluated in two poetic sequels to the ''Odyssey''. In the first of these, [[Giovanni Pascoli]]'s {{Lang|it|L'Ultimo Viaggio}} (''The Last Voyage'', 1906), the aging hero sets out to rediscover the emotions of his youth by retracing his journey from [[Troy]], only to discover that the island of Eea is deserted. What in his dream of love he had taken for the roaring of lions and Circe's song was now no more than the sound of the sea-wind in autumnal oaks (Cantos 16–17).<ref>The Italian text is at the [http://www.fondazionepascoli.it/Poesie/pc22.htm Fondazioni Pascoli] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090721115238/http://www.fondazionepascoli.it/Poesie/pc22.htm |date=2009-07-21 }}; there is a discussion of the work in Mario Truglio, ''Beyond the Family Romance: The Legend of Pascoli'', University of Toronto 2007, [https://books.google.com/books?id=nlOvSf7Of4MC&dq=Pascoli%20%20%22Circe%22&pg=PA65 pp. 65–68].</ref>

This melancholy dispelling of illusion is echoed in ''[[The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel]]'' (1938) by [[Nikos Kazantzakis]]. The fresh voyage in search of new meaning to life recorded there grows out of the hero's initial rejection of his past experiences in the first two sections. The Circe episode is viewed by him as a narrow escape from death of the spirit: ''With twisted hands and thighs we rolled on burning sands, / a hanging mess of hissing vipers glued in sun!... / Farewell the brilliant voyage, ended! Prow and soul / moored in the muddy port of the contented beast! / O prodigal, much-traveled soul, is this your country?'' His escape from this mire of sensuality comes one day when the sight of some fishermen, a mother and her baby enjoying the simple comforts of food and drink, recalls him to life, its duties and delights.<ref>The translation of Kimon Friar, New York 1958, [https://www.scribd.com/doc/10986184/The-Odyssey-A-Modern-Sequel-by-Nikos-Kazantzakis Book 2, pp. 126–29] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101105193622/http://www.scribd.com/doc/10986184/The-Odyssey-A-Modern-Sequel-by-Nikos-Kazantzakis |date=2010-11-05 }}.</ref> Where the attempt by Pascoli's hero to recapture the past ended in failure, Kazantzakis' Odysseus, already realising the emptiness of his experiences, journeys into what he hopes will be a fuller future. {{clear left}}