Mostri musulmani. La deumanizzazione dell’antagonista miscredente nella storia di Buovo d’Antona dalla tradizione anglonormanna al Bovo-Bukh di Elia Levita

The story of Beuve of Hampton circulated throughout the Late Middle Ages and was printed in a number of incunables issued in Venice and Bologna in the 1480s. One of those inspired Elia Levita to compose his own Old Yiddish version known as the Bovo-Bukh. Though written in Padua in 1507, Levita’s poem was printed in Württemberg in 1541. The Bovo-Bukh became so popular that it continued to be widely read and adapted in several Ashkenazi centres in Europe until the late 18th c entury. T he original story goes b ack to Anglo-Norman Boeuve de Haumtone, whose earliest manuscripts are dated to the end of the 13th century. Its plot features a creature called Escopart. It is a giant freak in the service of the Saracens. Yet, once baptised, it turns into a magical Auxiliary. In the early 15th century, Andrea da Barberino adapted the story in prose as Book IV of his largely fictional chronicle of The Royal House of France. In this text, the unbeliever appears as a werehound named Pulicane, but its narrative function is quite similar to Escopart’s. With its name changed into Pellucano, the character is depicted in the Venetian incunables too. In Levita’s version, it becomes Pelukan. The purpose of this paper is to present the ideological changes in the depiction of the monstrous unbeliever, both in historical terms (the timespan of more than two centuries) and with reference to different axiologies. The strong prejudice of the Anglo-Norman tradition, in which the low-born and the unbelievers were depicted as hell spawn never to be trusted, was replaced by a common-sense approach in the later versions of the story. Finally, in Levita’s poem, the confessional background becomes unimportant in determining personal allegiances

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