Elsa Morante e i classici. Considerazioni su tre opere minori

In this paper, starting from two contributes by Franco Serpa on Elsa Morante’s classical culture, I will tackle three minor – but not marginal – works by Morante as rewritings of classical stories and characters. The first is an early unpublished work devoted to the mythical origins of Capri, civilised by a Siren with her chant. The other two works were published in 1950 and they both include references to classical characters: the former to Catullus and Lesbia, the latter to Achilles. I will show how such references are respectively concerned with Morante’s view on the relationship between tragic and melodramatic and with her own system of characters