The configuration of Orpheus' poetic ethos in four versions of the myth

Abstract

The myth of Orpheus possesses a narrative power that has led to its story being told repeatedly, making it an important milestone for Western culture from ancient times to the present day. These narratives have created different versions that maintain the nodal points of the myth while adding particular elements of interest for study based on the production contexts in which those variants originated. In this work, we seek to analyze the passages that refer to Orpheus's descent into the underworld in different versions found in the following texts: Virgil's “Georgics IV” (453-565); Ovid's “Metamorphoses X” (1-84); “Orfeo y Eurídice”, a children's version by Alicia García Herrera; and the play “Orpheus and Eurydice” by Edward Eaton. Our hypothesis states that all versions of the text, despite the narrative and generic differences they present, focus on the configuration of Orpheus as a poet and the development of a poetic ethos for this character. In this sense, it will be important for our analysis to compare versions of the myth that account for the literary genres they subscribe to, to reconstruct the genetic matrix of this story.