Ursus as a Serial Figure

The figure of the strongman Ursus unquestionably occupies a central position among the enduring contributions of the Polish novel Quo vadis to the transnational popular culture of the twentieth century. Adding to the numerous film and television adaptations that Sienkiewicz’s historical novel has spurred through more than a century, the suggestive figure of its good-hearted, Herculean saviour has been extensively imitated, under a host of different names, in a ridiculously large number of extremely popular Italian films that otherwise have no connection with Sienkiewicz’s novel. Championed by heroes such as Maciste, Hercules, Samson, Goliath, and many more, the so called 'strongmen genre' flourished in Italy in two consecutive waves: an early wave that had its peak during and after World War I, and a later mid-century ‘sword-and-sandal’ wave between the 1950s and 1960s. Together, they offer a perfect trajectory along which to investigate how a serial figure is historically created, replicated, and transformed in time through a transtextual play with their characteristic features across the products of media culture.