Il ragno che danza. Il mito di Aracne nel tarantismo pugliese

Abstract

A particular permanence of the myth of Arachne can be found in apulian tarantismo, a ritual of dance and music used to cure the bite of a mythical spider, the taranta. In the tarantata’s dance we can see the main elements of the myth of Arachne: the transformation of the woman in a spider, the challenge to the divine and the higher value of art. In addition to this, the tarantismo shows itself like an incarnation of a myth of the Female to the Female because it’s a representation of eros foreclosed and the liberation of the woman from the constraints of a rigid, patriarchal society. Our guide in this analysis is the first movie about the tarantismo, La Taranta by Gianfranco Mingozzi, realized in 1961, with the commentary written by the poet Salvatore Quasimodo. With some influences of the Magna Mater’s cult, some dual elements taken from the Dionysian and the symbolic value of the wire the metamorphic myth of the spider-woman becomes also the representation of femme fatale, who sews life and death in a continuous intertwinement (see also Tolkien and Strauss’s cases).