Davanti allo sguardo di Orfeo

This paper focuses on the character of Eurydice in Underworld, relying on the Latin versions of the Orphic myth in Virgil and Ovid. Latin poets depict Orpheus as being unable to obey the ‘prohibition of glance’ imposed by the gods and behaving like a human being rather than a hero. In the Middle Ages allegorical interpretation prevails. But from Humanism onwards the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice happens to be narrated afresh as a ‘love story,’ in which the female protagonist’s profile undergoes a wide range of modifications. Here we take into consideration the dramaturgical and cinematographic reworkings that put at the center the dialectic of couple as a human adventure.