Regine e principesse nell' "Asinarius"

The essay examines the female figures of Asinarius, an elegiac comedy written in the Germanic area in the 13th century, which reworks the folkloric theme of Beauty and the Beast and Donkey Man with fairy-tale and fablelike accents. In particular, the figure of the princess reveals remarkable consonances with the corresponding figure in a tale that can be traced back to the narrative tradition of the Vikramacarita, a very popular collection of Indian tales composed in the 11th-13th centuries in Sanskrit and later translated into various languages. It is in the princess, who combines Ovidian and biblical echoes in her character, and an interesting correspondence with the Indian tale, that the most typical narrative and cultural syncretism of the Latin Middle Ages is clearly manifested.