Through the lexical, phraseological and thematic analysis of my primary texts, I succeeded in identifying a number of narrative avatars, i.e. narrative proliferations of a character connected with a certain story in Greek and other IE traditions. The identification of narrative avatars allowed me to ‘track down’ disguised characters among different Indo-European traditions and to identify striking similarities among stories which, at first sight, did not seem to have much in common.
The results of my research thus concern different stories or parts of stories, which I selected on the basis of their outstanding narrative and stylistic features (above all: inconsistencies and traditionality). Specifically:
(a) In connection with stories involving light-deities in the diverse IE traditions, I pointed out that the Greek Sun-god, the Old-Indic Twin-gods, and the Latvian Sun-goddess perform their diurnal and nocturnal journeys by means of the same vehicles and animals.
Furthermore, my study on the IE Dawn-goddesses shows that an ancient IE myth may ultimately underlie the modern fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. In most ancient versions of this story the protagonist is named after a ‘dawn-like’ prerogative (Brianda ‘the lofty one’, Thalia ‘the young/flourishing one’, Aurore). Moreover, like IE Dawn-goddesses Sleeping Beauties are Awakening Beauties, who are also victims of rapes.
Finally, through my study on gender-differentiation of the Sun-deities in Greek, Vedic and Baltic I tried to provide a relative chronology for the origin of male and female deities in different IE pantheons.
(b) In connection with narratives involving characters associated with the element ‘fire’ in Greek, Old Indic, Ossetic [Iranian], and Old Norse texts, my comparative study on Prometheus and Hermes pointed out that these two figures share a variety of common traits, reflected on a phraseological level. They are both skillful and mischievous characters, who are somehow associated with the element ‘fire’. Therefore, I provide new support to the hypothesis that Hermes is the Greek continuation of an IE fire-deity: Hermes is not only comparable to the Vedic Fire-god Agni but also to the Iranian (Ossetic) hero Syrdon, who has been never juxtaposed to him before. Like Hermes, Syrdon invents a musical instrument after stealing a cow. In turn, Syrdon shares significant achievements with Old Norse Loki.
Finally, my study on a typical prerogative of fire-gods, i.e. ‘hunger’, contributed to recognize another fire-avatar in Greek, namely: Erysichthon. This hero is punished by Demeter with insatiable hunger, after cutting a sacred grove of her. As such, his destiny strikingly resembles that of Old Indic Agni in the Mahābhārata and that of Loki in an episode from the prose Edda.
Thanks to the Marie Curie scholarship I could give great visibility to my work: I organized an international conference, set up a Youtube channel, and a dedicated page on the social media (Facebook, Instagram). In two years participated to ca. 15 conferences/talks and other cultural events (although some of them were delayed or rescheduled because of the COVID-19 outbreak) and wrote/re-ealborated ca. 10 papers on mythological, phraseological and methodological matters.
