De monstruo a meretriz: gestación de la Quimera de Belerofonte en el Ovide moralisé a lo largo de la tradición textual del mito

Abstract

Chimaira, the terrible, triple monster to which Bellerophon is exposed in every source of his western textual tradition,
undergoes a clear evolution from its first record in the Iliad to the Ovide moralisé, in the French Middle Ages. There here
are two lines in this process that initially converge, one that pays attention to the negative aspect of women (Euripides,
Aristophanes and his scholium, and Plutarch) and another that equates the monster with the female sex (Heraclitus and
Agatharchides of Cnidus). They both, through Latin poetry and pagan authors of Late Antiquity, reach Fulgentius, its
first Christian allegorisator. From here, the medieval allegorization of the myth by Baudri de Bourgueil under the direct
influence of the Virgilianisation of the hero outlined by other authors (commentators to Boethius, Theodulf of Orleans,
William of Conches and the Vatican Mythographer I) and the identification of the monster as a prostitute (Marbodius,
Bernard Sylvester, Alexander Neckam and the scholiastic of Horace) flow into the 14th century’s Ovide moralisé, where
it appears fused and included in the Christian faith. Here the Chimaira is finally equated with the prostitute, the sin of the
flesh and general sin from which Bellerophon, now turned into Jesus, came to save us.