Exempla z {Metamorfoz} Owidiusza w {Okręcie błaznów} Sebastiana Branta
Exempla from Ovid’s {Metamorphoses} and Sebastian Brant’s {The Ship of Fools}

Summary/Abstract: From among around four hundred examples taken from the Bible, mythology and history, which in Sebastian Brant’s {The Ship of Fools} are designed to instruct and caution, more than twenty come from Ovid’s {Metamorphoses}. Brant does not make references to Ovid’s work and he mentions the poet only once, as the author of {Ars amatoria} (bůler kunst), which brought Ovid nothing but misfortune. Most of them appear in Chapter XIII {On Seduction} ({Von buolschaft}) and single ones in Chapters: XXVI, LIII, LX, LXIV and LXVII. The references are allusive and abridged, they concern pathetic consequences of wicked or rash love, jealousy and hatred as well as self-loving and foolhardy imprudence. They stand as codes, which can not be deciphered without knowing the source and it implies that Brant either assumes the reader has the required knowledge or appeals to gain it. It is also possible that he refers to common at that time didactic modifications of {Metamorphoses}. Problematic and often tragic illustration of human fortunes in Ovid’s work is reduced in Brant’s satire to parenetic formula, which intrigues and is expressed with vivid and crude language. The most explicit example of dissonance between Brant’s and Ovid’s intention is a truly clownlike character – Marsyas, who with obstinacy plays bagpipes, a clownish instrument, whereas in Metamorphoses he enraptured people playing his aulos and his death as martyr is mourned by not only nymphs and shepherds, but also by nature. The rights of the genre, in this case of moral satire, proved to be stronger than philosophical meaning of mythological message.

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