Italian writer Michele Sanvico to release comprehensive research on origin of Apennine Sibyl's myth

ROME - Dec. 16, 2018 - PRLog -- Michele Sanvico, an Italian writer and storyteller who in recent years has become the most informed authority in the eerie legend of the Apennine Sibyl, is to publish an extensive research on the true origin of the enigmatic myth which has been living for centuries in the mountainous fastnesses of the Italian Apennines.

The Apennine Sibyl was first mentioned in two fifteenth-century works, Andrea da Barberino's "Guerrino the Wretch" and Antoine de la Sale's "The Paradise of Queen Sibyl", but the very origin of this myth that has cast a spell over the whole Europe for many centuries, attracting visitors as far as a remote mountain set in the central Apennines in Italy, has never been identified.

Following the hidden traces left by the Sibyl's legendary tale in the literature of the Middle Ages, Michele Sanvico is opening a new road that will help unveil the true core of the ancient legend. A comprehensive search has been carried out by the Italian author on a large collection of manuscripted poems and romances, the cultural heritage of an antique chivalric world, and the findings are thoroughly amazing.

«The Apennine Sibyl seems to have popped up almost from nothing in the fifteenth century», said Michele Sanvico, an Italian writer of literary fiction and creative nonfiction «but this is not the actual truth. Many evidences of her passage through the preceding hundreds of years can be retrieved in earlier chivalric works, some of them written by that same Andrea da Barberino, the author of "Guerrino the Wretch", and many others part of a chivalric literary production which spans from the twelfth century to the fifteenth. Of course», adds Michele Sanvico, «the most interesting result is that in medieval centuries the Sibyl does not appear with her final semblance, instead she reveals to descend from an illustrious literary and oral lineage, a family line which has undergone specific transformations across the centuries until the Apennine Sibyl finally emerged».

This comprehensive research work has been carried out by Michele Sanvico on the original manuscripts dating to the Middle Ages, preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the British Library, the New York Public Library and other prominent institutions around the world. Stunning pictures of the relevant portions of the manuscripts will be shown to the readers for the first time ever, so as to convey the feeling of a full, extraordinary immersion into the words written on vellum by the ancient scribes.

This thorough and unprecedented investigation, independently conducted by Michele Sanvico, made it possible to retrieve and re-quote a number of scientific papers on the same subject that are almost forgotten in our present days, including a fundamental article written in the 1950s by Roger S. Loomis, one of the most renowned authorities in the Matter of Britain and the Arthurian cycle: a writing in which the illustrious American professor and scholar set down a series of observations and conclusions that point to the very same path trodden today with this new research.

«The goal of my enquiry», said Michele Sanvico, «is to uncover the real essence of the myth of the Apennine Sibyl, the inner core of her ancient legend. I intend to remove all literary additions conferred to her legendary tale across the centuries, so as to take off all the concentric layers that encircle and suffocate the true mythical nucleus. The daring aim of all that is to clean her figure by wiping out the many narrative elements that have been added with time to her story, borrowed from several different mythical tales».

The research plan envisaged by Michele Sanvico does not end here. The upcoming publication is the second step of a long journey into the myth of the Apennine Sibyl which began with a paper already released a few months ago ("The Apennine Sibyl: a journey into history in search of the oracle"), and will continue with a further series of articles which will get to the inner core of the legend.

The final scientific target of the whole investigation is to strip the legend of all the additional literary disguises so as to be able to behold, at the very end of the search, the genuine, antique semblance of the Sibyl: the true nature of the Sibyl of the Apennines.

For more information, visit Michele Sanvico's website dedicated to the mystery of Mount Sibyl (http://www.italianwriter.it/TheApennineSibyl/TheApennineS...) and the dedicated Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/MountSibyl/).