Altre metamorfosi: il romanzo di Apuleio nell'"Adone"

[Autom. eng. transl.] The literature of the ancient world, a repertoire that Marino loved to attend in all its extension, proposed at least two different models of metamorphosis. The events narrated in series in Ovid's poem, when they concerned mortals, were irreversible transformations, and as such inevitably concluded a tale; as a rule the characters who were subjected to them did not maintain a human intellect in their new form; the overall meaning of the work was cosmic in scope. On the contrary, the metamorphosis contained in Apuleius' novel is reversible, and therefore can move events and make them proceed; the character keeps his human mind even in animal form; and the work rather expresses an ethical-pedagogical meaning. In the Adone both types are present: the 'Ovid' one especially in the second stories of cantos V and XIX, the 'Apuleian' one in the transformation of the protagonist into a parrot (c. XIII). Apuleius's "Golden Ass" was available to Marino in the original text and in addition to a vulgarization; the contribution intends to investigate the presence of Apuleius in the text of the poem, which, beyond the already studied dependence on this source of the entire Canto IV (the fable of Cupid and Psyche), appear wider than what has been noted so far by the critics.