Editing Circe (section)

== Later literature ==
[[File:De_claris_mulieribus.jpg|thumb|"Circea" in [[Giovanni Boccaccio|Boccaccio]]'s {{c.|1365|lk=no}} ''[[De Claris Mulieribus]]'', a catalogue of famous women, from a 1474 edition|alt=]]

[[Giovanni Boccaccio]] provided a digest of what was known of Circe during the [[Middle Ages]] in his ''[[De mulieribus claris]]'' (''Famous Women'', 1361–1362). While following the tradition that she lived in Italy, he comments wryly that there are now many more temptresses like her to lead men astray.<ref>tr. Virginia Brown, Harvard University 2003 [https://books.google.com/books?id=3Nj04ULC0s8C&dq=Circe&pg=PA76 ch. 38, pp. 74–76].</ref>

There is a very different interpretation of the encounter with Circe in [[John Gower]]'s long didactic poem ''[[Confessio Amantis]]'' (1380). Ulysses is depicted as deeper in sorcery and readier of tongue than Circe and through this means he leaves her pregnant with Telegonus. Most of the account deals with the son's later quest for and accidental killing of his father, drawing the moral that only evil can come of the use of sorcery.<ref>John Gower, English Works, [https://archive.org/stream/completeworksofj03goweuoft#page/204/mode/2up 6.1391–1788]; there is also a [http://www.ellinanderson.com/Circe%20and%20Ulysses.html modern translation] by Ellin Anderson.</ref>

The story of Ulysses and Circe was retold as an episode in Georg Rollenhagen's German verse epic, ''Froschmeuseler'' (''The Frogs and Mice'', Magdeburg, 1595). In this 600-page expansion of the pseudo-Homeric ''[[Batrachomyomachia]]'', it is related at the court of the mice and takes up sections 5–8 of the first part.<ref>The German original is available on [https://books.google.com/books?id=KPI6AAAAcAAJ&pg=PT241 Google Books].</ref>

In [[Lope de Vega]]'s miscellany ''La Circe – con otras rimas y prosas'' (1624), the story of her encounter with Ulysses appears as a verse epic in three cantos.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3qoS6eckQ-kC|title=Pages 1–69|last1=Vega|first1=Lope de|year=1624|access-date=2014-03-19}}</ref> This takes its beginning from Homer's account, but it is then embroidered; in particular, Circe's love for Ulysses remains unrequited.

As "Circe's Palace", [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]] retold the Homeric account as the third section in his collection of stories from Greek mythology, ''[[Tanglewood Tales]]'' (1853). The transformed Picus continually appears in this, trying to warn Ulysses, and then Eurylochus, of the danger to be found in the palace, and is rewarded at the end by being given back his human shape. In most accounts Ulysses only demands this for his own men.<ref>The third section of the [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/976/976-h/976-h.htm#2H_4_0003 Gutenberg edition].</ref>

In her survey of the ''Transformations of Circe'', Judith Yarnall comments of this figure, who started out as a comparatively minor goddess of unclear origin, that "What we know for certain – what Western literature attests to – is her remarkable staying power…These different versions of Circe's myth can be seen as mirrors, sometimes clouded and sometimes clear, of the fantasies and assumptions of the cultures that produced them." After appearing as just one of the characters that Odysseus encounters on his wandering, "Circe herself, in the twists and turns of her story through the centuries, has gone through far more metamorphoses than those she inflicted on Odysseus's companions."<ref>Judith Yarnall, ''Transformations of Circe'', University of Illinois, 1994, [https://books.google.com/books?id=75rcKJQ6X-MC&pg=PA152 pp. 1–2].</ref> {{clear left}}

===Reasoning beasts===
[[File:G.B.Trotti Circe.jpg|thumb|[[Giovanni Battista Trotti]]'s fresco of Circe returning Ulysses' followers to human form (c. 1610)|left]]

One of the most enduring literary themes connected with the figure of Circe was her ability to change men into animals. There was much speculation concerning how this could be, whether the human consciousness changed at the same time, and even whether it was a change for the better. The Gryllus dialogue was taken up by another Italian writer, [[Giovan Battista Gelli]], in his ''La Circe'' (1549). This is a series of ten philosophical and moral dialogues between Ulysses and the humans transformed into various animals, ranging from an oyster to an elephant, in which Circe sometimes joins. Most argue against changing back; only the last animal, a philosopher in its former existence, wants to. The work was translated into English soon after in 1557 by [[Henry Iden]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gelli |first=Giovanni Battista |title=La Circe |publisher=Iohn Cawoode |location=London |publication-date=1557 |language=en-UK |translator-last=Iden |translator-first=Henry |trans-title=Circes of Iohn Baptista Gello, Florentyne |lccn=28-8681 |oclc=56617464}}</ref> Later the English poet [[Edmund Spenser]] also made reference to Plutarch's dialogue in the section of his ''[[Faerie Queene]]'' (1590) based on the Circe episode which appears at the end of Book II. Sir Guyon changes back the victims of Acrasia's erotic frenzy in the Bower of Bliss, most of whom are abashed at their fall from chivalric grace, ''But one above the rest in speciall, / That had an hog beene late, hight Grille by name, / Repined greatly, and did him miscall, / That had from hoggish forme him brought to naturall.''<ref>Book 2.12, stanza 86.</ref>

Two other Italians wrote rather different works that centre on the animal within the human. One was [[Niccolò Machiavelli]] in his unfinished long poem, ''[[The Golden Ass (Machiavelli)|L'asino d'oro]]'' (''The Golden Ass'', 1516). The author meets a beautiful herdswoman surrounded by Circe's herd of beasts. After spending a night of love with him, she explains the characteristics of the animals in her charge: the lions are the brave, the bears are the violent, the wolves are those forever dissatisfied, and so on (Canto 6). In Canto 7 he is introduced to those who experience frustration: a cat that has allowed its prey to escape; an agitated dragon; a fox constantly on the look-out for traps; a dog that bays the moon; Aesop's [[The Lion in Love (fable)|lion in love]] that allowed himself to be deprived of his teeth and claws. There are also emblematic satirical portraits of various Florentine personalities. In the eighth and last canto he has a conversation with a pig that, like the Gryllus of Plutarch, does not want to be changed back and condemns human greed, cruelty and conceit.<ref>There is a French translation in ''Oeuvres complètes'' X, Paris 1825, [https://books.google.com/books?id=KkgTAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA403 pp. 401–53].</ref>

The other Italian author was the esoteric philosopher [[Giordano Bruno]], who wrote in Latin. His ''Cantus Circaeus'' (''The Incantation of Circe'') was the fourth work on memory and the association of ideas by him to be published in 1582. It contains a series of poetic dialogues, in the first of which, after a long series of incantations to the seven planets of the [[Hermeticism|Hermetic tradition]], most humans appear changed into different creatures in the scrying bowl. The sorceress Circe is then asked by her handmaiden Moeris about the type of behaviour with which each is associated. According to Circe, for instance, ''fireflies are the learned, wise, and illustrious amidst idiots, asses, and obscure men'' (Question 32). In later sections different characters discuss the use of images in the imagination in order to facilitate use of the [[art of memory]], which is the real aim of the work.<ref>The original and its English translation is available [http://www.tomaszahora.org/CantusCircaeusTranslation.htm online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190222002259/http://www.tomaszahora.org/CantusCircaeusTranslation.htm |date=2019-02-22 }}.</ref>

French writers were to take their lead from Gelli in the following century.<ref>Much of the information that follows can be found discussed in Brigitte Urbani, ''Vaut-il "mieux mille fois être ânes qu'être hommes"? Quelques réécritures de La Circe de Giovan Battista Gelli'', INT Chroniques 69/70. 2002 [http://chroniquesitaliennes.univ-paris3.fr/PDF/69-70/69-Urbani.pdf pp. 163–81].</ref> [[Antoine Jacob]] wrote a one-act social comedy in rhyme, ''Les Bestes raisonnables'' (''The Reasoning Beasts'', 1661) which allowed him to satirise contemporary manners. On the isle of Circe, Ulysses encounters an ass that was once a doctor, a lion that had been a valet, a female doe and a horse, all of whom denounce the decadence of the times. The ass sees human asses everywhere, ''Asses in the town square, asses in the suburbs, / Asses in the provinces, asses proud at court, / Asses browsing in the meadows, military asses trooping, / Asses tripping it at balls, asses in the theatre stalls.'' To drive the point home, in the end it is only the horse, formerly a courtesan, who wants to return to her former state.

The same theme occupies [[La Fontaine's Fables|La Fontaine's]] late fable, "The Companions of Ulysses" (XII.1, 1690), which also echoes Plutarch and Gelli. Once transformed, every animal (which includes a lion, a bear, a wolf and a mole) protests that their lot is better and refuses to be restored to human shape.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/la_fontaine/jean_de/fables/book12.html#book12.1|title=The Fables of La Fontaine, by Jean de La Fontaine : Book XII.|website=ebooks.adelaide.edu.au|access-date=2019-03-10|archive-date=2018-06-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180623085104/https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/la_fontaine/jean_de/fables/book12.html#book12.1|url-status=dead}}</ref> Charles Dennis shifted this fable to stand at the head of his translation of La Fontaine, ''Select Fables'' (1754), but provides his own conclusion that ''When Mortals from the path of Honour stray, / And the strong passions over reason sway, / What are they then but Brutes? / 'Tis vice alone that constitutes / Th'enchanting wand and magic bowl, The exterior form of Man they wear, / But are in fact both Wolf and Bear, / The transformation's in the Soul.''<ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CK4iXvnRAXQC&pg=PR7S|title=Select Fables|first=Charles|last=Denis|date=2018|publisher=Tonson and Draper|via=Google Books}}</ref>

[[Louis Fuzelier]] and [[Marc-Antoine Legrand]] titled their comic opera of 1718 ''Les animaux raisonnables''. It had more or less the same scenario transposed into another medium and set to music by [[Jacques Aubert]]. Circe, wishing to be rid of the company of Ulysses, agrees to change back his companions, but only the dolphin is willing. The others, who were formerly a corrupt judge (now a wolf), a financier (a pig), an abused wife (a hen), a deceived husband (a bull) and a flibbertigibbet (a linnet), find their present existence more agreeable.

[[File:Schubert Ulysses and Circe.jpg|left|thumb|[[Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg]]'s ''Ulysses at the Palace of Circe'' (1667)]]

The Venetian [[Gasparo Gozzi]] was another Italian who returned to Gelli for inspiration in the 14 prose ''Dialoghi dell'isola di Circe'' (''Dialogues from Circe's Island'') published as journalistic pieces between 1760 and 1764. In this moral work, the aim of Ulysses in talking to the beasts is to learn more of the human condition. It includes figures from fable ([[The Fox and the Crow (Aesop)|The fox and the crow]], XIII) and from myth to illustrate its vision of society at variance. Far from needing the intervention of Circe, the victims find their natural condition as soon as they set foot on the island. The philosopher here is not Gelli's elephant but the bat that retreats from human contact into the darkness, like Bruno's fireflies (VI). The only one who wishes to change in Gozzi's work is the bear, a satirist who had dared to criticize Circe and had been changed as a punishment (IX).

There were two more satirical dramas in later centuries. One modelled on the Gryllus episode in Plutarch occurs as a chapter of [[Thomas Love Peacock]]'s late novel, ''[[Gryll Grange]]'' (1861), under the title "Aristophanes in London". Half Greek comedy, half Elizabethan masque, it is acted at the Grange by the novel's characters as a Christmas entertainment. In it [[Spiritualism (movement)|Spiritualist]] [[mediumship|mediums]] raise Circe and Gryllus and try to convince the latter of the superiority of modern times, which he rejects as intellectually and materially regressive.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21514?msg=welcome_stranger|title=Gryll Grange by Thomas Love Peacock|via=www.gutenberg.org|date=2007}}</ref> An Italian work drawing on the transformation theme was the comedy by Ettore Romagnoli, ''La figlia del Sole'' (''The Daughter of the Sun'', 1919). [[Hercules]] arrives on the island of Circe with his servant Cercopo and has to be rescued by the latter when he too is changed into a pig. But, since the naturally innocent other animals had become corrupted by imitating human vices, the others who had been changed were refused when they begged to be rescued.

Also in England, Austin Dobson engaged more seriously with Homer's account of the transformation of Odysseus' companions when, though ''Head, face and members bristle into swine, / Still cursed with sense, their mind remains alone''.<ref>Pope's translation of the Odyssey, Book X, [https://books.google.com/books?id=IUoIAAAAQAAJ&dq=%22Head%2C%20face%20and%20members%20bristle%20into%20swine%22&pg=PA233 lines 279–80].</ref> Dobson's "[[s:Littell's Living Age/Volume 127/Issue 1640/The Prayer of the Swine to Circe|The Prayer of the Swine to Circe]]"<ref>''Vignettes in Rhyme and other verses'', US edition 1880, [https://archive.org/stream/vignettesinrhyme00dobsuoft#page/206/mode/2up/ pp. 206–10].</ref> (1640) depicts the horror of being imprisoned in an animal body in this way with the human consciousness unchanged. There appears to be no relief, for only in the final line is it revealed that Odysseus has arrived to free them. But in [[Matthew Arnold]]'s dramatic poem "The Strayed Reveller" (1849),<ref>Matthew Arnold, ''The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems'', London 1849, [http://www.telelib.com/authors/A/ArnoldMatthew/verse/strayedreveller/strayedreveller.html pp. 11–27].</ref> in which Circe is one of the characters, the power of her potion is differently interpreted. The inner tendencies unlocked by it are not the choice between animal nature and reason but between two types of impersonality, between divine clarity and the poet's participatory and tragic vision of life. In the poem, Circe discovers a youth laid asleep in the portico of her temple by a draught of her ivy-wreathed bowl. On awaking from possession by the poetic frenzy it has induced, he craves for it to be continued.<ref>M. G. Sundell, "Story and Context in "The Strayed Reveller", Victorian Poetry 3.3, West Virginia University 1965, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/20171700?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents pp. 161–70].</ref>

===Sexual politics===
With the [[Renaissance]] there began to be a reinterpretation of what it was that changed the men, if it was not simply magic. For [[Socrates]], in Classical times, it had been gluttony overcoming their self-control.<ref>Xenophon's ''Memorabilia of Socrates'' [http://thriceholy.net/Texts/Memorabilia.html Book I, 3.7].</ref> But for the influential emblematist [[Andrea Alciato]], it was unchastity. In the second edition of his ''Emblemata'' (1546), therefore, Circe became the type of the [[Prostitution|prostitute]]. His Emblem 76 is titled ''Cavendum a meretricibus''; its accompanying Latin verses mention Picus, Scylla and the companions of Ulysses, and concludes that "Circe with her famous name indicates a whore and any who loves such a one loses his reason".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/emblem.php?id=A46a016|title=Alciato at Glasgow: Emblem: Cavendum à meretricibus.|website=www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk}}</ref> His English imitator [[Geoffrey Whitney]] used a variation of Alciato's illustration in his own ''Choice of Emblemes'' (1586) but gave it the new title of ''Homines voluptatibus transformantur'', men are transformed by their passions.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.mun.ca/alciato/whit/w082.html|title=Whitney 82|website=www.mun.ca}}</ref> This explains her appearance in the Nighttown section named after her in [[James Joyce]]'s novel ''[[Ulysses (novel)#Episode 15, Circe|Ulysses]]''. Written in the form of a stage script, it makes of Circe the brothel madam, Bella Cohen. Bloom, the book's protagonist, fantasizes that she turns into a cruel man-tamer named Mr Bello who makes him get down on all fours and rides him like a horse.<ref>The text is at [http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/ulysses/15 Online Literature].</ref>

By the 19th century, Circe was ceasing to be a mythical figure. Poets treated her either as an individual or at least as the type of a certain kind of woman. The French poet [[Joseph Albert Alexandre Glatigny|Albert Glatigny]] addresses "Circé" in his {{Lang|fr|Les vignes folles}} (1857) and makes of her a voluptuous opium dream, the magnet of masochistic fantasies.<ref>French text [http://www.mediterranees.net/mythes/ulysse/epreuves/circe/glatigny.html online].</ref> [[Louis-Nicolas Ménard]]'s sonnet in {{Lang|fr|Rêveries d'un païen mystique}} (1876) describes her as enchanting all with her virginal look, but appearance belies the accursed reality.<ref>French text [http://www.mediterranees.net/mythes/ulysse/epreuves/circe/menard.html online].</ref> Poets in English were not far behind in this lurid portrayal. [[John Warren, 3rd Baron de Tabley|Lord de Tabley]]'s "Circe" (1895) is a thing of decadent perversity likened to a tulip, ''A flaunting bloom, naked and undivine... / With freckled cheeks and splotch'd side serpentine, / A gipsy among flowers''.<ref>[http://www.bartleby.com/246/757.html ''A Victorian Anthology''] 1837–95.</ref>

[[File:'The Kingdom of Sorceress Circe' by Angelo Caroselli and Pseudo Caroselli.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|left|''The Kingdom of Sorceress Circe'' by [[Angelo Caroselli]] (c. 1630)]]

That central image is echoed by the blood-striped flower of [[T.S.Eliot]]'s student poem "Circe's Palace" (1909) in the [[Harvard Advocate]]. Circe herself does not appear, her character is suggested by what is in the grounds and the beasts in the forest beyond: panthers, pythons, and peacocks that ''look at us with the eyes of men whom we knew long ago''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/poems/eliot-harvard-poems.html|title=T.S. Eliot's 'Harvard Advocate' Poems|website=world.std.com}}</ref> Rather than a temptress, she has become an [[Emasculation|emasculatory]] threat.<ref>James E. Miller Jnr, ''T.S. Eliot: The Making Of An American Poet'', Pennsylvania State University 2005, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Aq-lfNXrIDAC&dq=%22Circe&pg=PA71 p. 71].</ref>

Several female poets make Circe stand up for herself, using the soliloquy form to voice the woman's position. The 19th-century English poet [[Augusta Webster]], much of whose writing explored the female condition, has a dramatic monologue in blank verse titled "Circe" in her volume ''Portraits'' (1870).<ref>The whole text can be read on [http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/circe PoemHunter].</ref> There the sorceress anticipates her meeting with Ulysses and his men and insists that she does not turn men into pigs—she merely takes away the disguise that makes them seem human. ''But any draught, pure water, natural wine, / out of my cup, revealed them to themselves / and to each other. Change? there was no change; / only disguise gone from them unawares''. The mythological character of the speaker contributes at a safe remove to the [[Victorian morality|Victorian]] discourse on women's sexuality by expressing female desire and criticizing the subordinate role given to women in heterosexual politics.<ref>Christine Sutphin, The representation of women's heterosexual desire in Augusta Webster's "Circe" and "Medea in Athens", Women's Writing 5.3, 1998, pp. 373–93.</ref>

Two American poets also explored feminine psychology in poems ostensibly about the enchantress. Leigh Gordon Giltner's "Circe" was included in her collection ''The Path of Dreams'' (1900), the first stanza of which relates the usual story of men turned into swine by her spell. But then a second stanza presents a sensuous portrait of an unnamed woman, very much in the French vein; once more, it concludes, "A Circe's spells transform men into swine".<ref>''The Path of Dreams'', [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27024/27024-h/27024-h.htm#Page_54 p. 54].</ref> This is no passive victim of male projections but a woman conscious of her sexual power. So too is [[H.D.]]'s "Circe", from her collection ''Hymen'' (1921). In her soliloquy she reviews the conquests with which she has grown bored, then mourns the one instance when she failed. In not naming Ulysses himself, Doolittle universalises an emotion with which all women might identify.<ref>''Hymen'', [http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/doolittle/hymen/1921-circe.html pp. 21–22].</ref> At the end of the century, British poet [[Carol Ann Duffy]] wrote a monologue entitled ''Circe'' which pictures the goddess addressing an audience of "nereids and nymphs". In this outspoken episode in the war between the sexes, Circe describes the various ways in which all parts of a pig could and should be cooked.<ref>''The World's Wife'', London 1999; the text is on the [http://www.porkopolis.org/library/pig-poetry/carol-ann-duffy Porkopolis website].</ref>

[[File:Dosso Dossi 003.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Dosso Dossi]]'s ''[[Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape]]'' (c. 1525)]]

Another indication of the progression in interpreting the Circe figure is given by two poems a century apart, both of which engage with paintings of her. The first is the sonnet that [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti]] wrote in response to [[Edward Burne-Jones]]' "The Wine of Circe" in his volume ''Poems'' (1870). It gives a faithful depiction of the painting's [[Pre-Raphaelite]] mannerism but its description of Circe's potion as "distilled of death and shame" also accords with the contemporary (male) identification of Circe with perversity. This is further underlined by his statement (in a letter) that the black panthers there are "images of ruined passion" and by his anticipation at the end of the poem of ''passion's tide-strown shore / Where the disheveled seaweed hates the sea''.<ref>Painting and poem are juxtaposed on the [http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/the-wine-of-circe-by-edward-burne-jones-poem-by-dante-gabriel-rossetti Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood site]; the letter to Barbara Bodichon is quoted on the [http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/24-1869.raw.html Rossetti Archive site].</ref> The Australian [[A. D. Hope]]'s "Circe – after the painting by Dosso Dossi", on the other hand, frankly admits humanity's animal inheritance as natural and something in which even Circe shares. In the poem, he links the fading rationality and speech of her lovers to her own animal cries in the act of love.<ref>''A Late Picking – poems 1965–74'', quoted in the [http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/hope-a-d/circe-0417019 Australian Poetry Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180704035713/https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/hope-a-d/circe-0417019 |date=2018-07-04 }}.</ref>

There remain some poems that bear her name that have more to do with their writers' private preoccupations than with reinterpreting her myth. The link with it in [[Margaret Atwood]]'s "Circe/Mud Poems", first published in ''You Are Happy'' (1974), is more a matter of allusion and is nowhere overtly stated beyond the title. It is a reflection on contemporary gender politics that scarcely needs the disguises of Augusta Webster's.<ref>''Selected Poems'', Boston 1976 [https://books.google.com/books?id=Vv2dfKp74sAC&q=circe pp. 201–23].</ref> With two other poems by male writers it is much the same: [[Louis Macneice]]'s, for example, whose "Circe" appeared in his first volume, ''Poems'' (London, 1935); or [[Robert Lowell]]'s, whose "Ulysses and Circe" appeared in his last, ''Day by Day'' (New York, 1977). Both poets have appropriated the myth to make a personal statement about their broken relationships.<ref>Jane Polden, ''Regeneration: Journey Through the Mid-Life Crisis'', London 2002, [https://books.google.com/books?id=nXSWIIugy_0C&dq=%22Circe%22&pg=PA125 pp. 124–28]; "Ulysses is of course one more surrogate for the poet", Bruce Michelson, ''Lowell Versus Lowell'', Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1983, [http://www.vqronline.org/essay/lowell-versus-lowell pp. 22–39].</ref>

===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}}