Peter Mack
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691194004
- eISBN:
- 9780691195353
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691194004.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
In literary and cultural studies, “tradition” is a word everyone uses but few address critically. In this book, the author offers a wide-ranging exploration of the creative power of literary ...
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In literary and cultural studies, “tradition” is a word everyone uses but few address critically. In this book, the author offers a wide-ranging exploration of the creative power of literary tradition, from the middle ages to the twenty-first century, revealing in new ways how it helps writers and readers make new works and meanings. The book argues that the best way to understand tradition is by examining the moments when a writer takes up an old text and writes something new out of a dialogue with that text and the promptings of the present situation. The book examines Petrarch as a user, instigator, and victim of tradition. It shows how Chaucer became the first great English writer by translating and adapting a minor poem by Boccaccio. It investigates how Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser made new epic meanings by playing with assumptions, episodes, and phrases translated from their predecessors. It then analyzes how the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell drew on tradition to address the new problem of urban deprivation in Mary Barton. And, finally, it looks at how the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, in his 2004 novel Wizard of the Crow, reflects on biblical, English literary, and African traditions. Drawing on key theorists, critics, historians, and sociologists, and stressing the international character of literary tradition, the book illuminates the not entirely free choices readers and writers make to create meaning in collaboration and competition with their models.Less
In literary and cultural studies, “tradition” is a word everyone uses but few address critically. In this book, the author offers a wide-ranging exploration of the creative power of literary tradition, from the middle ages to the twenty-first century, revealing in new ways how it helps writers and readers make new works and meanings. The book argues that the best way to understand tradition is by examining the moments when a writer takes up an old text and writes something new out of a dialogue with that text and the promptings of the present situation. The book examines Petrarch as a user, instigator, and victim of tradition. It shows how Chaucer became the first great English writer by translating and adapting a minor poem by Boccaccio. It investigates how Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser made new epic meanings by playing with assumptions, episodes, and phrases translated from their predecessors. It then analyzes how the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell drew on tradition to address the new problem of urban deprivation in Mary Barton. And, finally, it looks at how the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, in his 2004 novel Wizard of the Crow, reflects on biblical, English literary, and African traditions. Drawing on key theorists, critics, historians, and sociologists, and stressing the international character of literary tradition, the book illuminates the not entirely free choices readers and writers make to create meaning in collaboration and competition with their models.
Lorna Hutson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199212439
- eISBN:
- 9780191707209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212439.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter explores further the significance of forensic rhetoric in Latin intrigue comedies, which reflexively identify their own ‘probability’ (their power to convince us as stories) with legal ...
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This chapter explores further the significance of forensic rhetoric in Latin intrigue comedies, which reflexively identify their own ‘probability’ (their power to convince us as stories) with legal scams. It shows how English humanists imitating Plautus and Terence tended to emphasize the forensic or legal elements of the plays, explicitly associating the achievement of ‘probable’ comic recognitions with the power of judges to decide on guilt or innocence using merely probable evidence. The chapter then considers the 1560s and 1570s as the decades which saw the beginnings of an increase of ‘governance’, requiring skills of evidence evaluation. It examines George Gascoigne's sceptical, mocking games with probability and evidence evaluation in his Supposes and shows how Gascoigne later adapted the mimetic power of probable argument in less satirical and more civically minded ways by inventing an ingenious and influential form of ‘magistrate-detective drama’.Less
This chapter explores further the significance of forensic rhetoric in Latin intrigue comedies, which reflexively identify their own ‘probability’ (their power to convince us as stories) with legal scams. It shows how English humanists imitating Plautus and Terence tended to emphasize the forensic or legal elements of the plays, explicitly associating the achievement of ‘probable’ comic recognitions with the power of judges to decide on guilt or innocence using merely probable evidence. The chapter then considers the 1560s and 1570s as the decades which saw the beginnings of an increase of ‘governance’, requiring skills of evidence evaluation. It examines George Gascoigne's sceptical, mocking games with probability and evidence evaluation in his Supposes and shows how Gascoigne later adapted the mimetic power of probable argument in less satirical and more civically minded ways by inventing an ingenious and influential form of ‘magistrate-detective drama’.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book presents a comprehensive view of the epic tradition from Homer, through Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and the host of minor writers who helped create the idiom within which these writers ...
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This book presents a comprehensive view of the epic tradition from Homer, through Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and the host of minor writers who helped create the idiom within which these writers worked, to the idiom within which these writers worked, to the individual authors in historical context link to develop a powerful explanation of how and why the epic changed from Homer to Milton. The book shows how the romance hero, whose prime motives are love and pity, emerged from a sequence of reinterpretations of Homer that runs from Virgil's Aeneid and its medieval redactions to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Relating the emergence of the romance hero to the digressive, decentred form of romance, the book explores how later writers sought to control the digressive energies of the romance hero and to create a language and form of heroism more like those of classical epic. This analysis leads to a fresh account of the way in which Renaissance writers responded to, and moved tentatively towards, the writing of the past. Arguing against the view that Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton were engaged in a battle for mastery over their predecessors, the book reveals how they transformed interpretations of past epic in order to draw closer to the narrative forms of their classical forebears.Less
This book presents a comprehensive view of the epic tradition from Homer, through Virgil, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and the host of minor writers who helped create the idiom within which these writers worked, to the idiom within which these writers worked, to the individual authors in historical context link to develop a powerful explanation of how and why the epic changed from Homer to Milton. The book shows how the romance hero, whose prime motives are love and pity, emerged from a sequence of reinterpretations of Homer that runs from Virgil's Aeneid and its medieval redactions to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Relating the emergence of the romance hero to the digressive, decentred form of romance, the book explores how later writers sought to control the digressive energies of the romance hero and to create a language and form of heroism more like those of classical epic. This analysis leads to a fresh account of the way in which Renaissance writers responded to, and moved tentatively towards, the writing of the past. Arguing against the view that Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and Milton were engaged in a battle for mastery over their predecessors, the book reveals how they transformed interpretations of past epic in order to draw closer to the narrative forms of their classical forebears.
Albert Russell Ascoli
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234288
- eISBN:
- 9780823241231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234288.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Although Ariosto is often thought of as a literary fantasist, this chapter argues for his oblique political engagement in his romance-epic, Orlando furioso, primarily through the strategic ...
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Although Ariosto is often thought of as a literary fantasist, this chapter argues for his oblique political engagement in his romance-epic, Orlando furioso, primarily through the strategic juxtaposition of passages referring to contemporary and historical events with narratives that provide indirect and allusive commentary on them. In particular, the episode of the cannibalistic Orco (canto 17)—a carry over from Boiardo's Innamoramento di Orlando and a descendant of the Homeric Cyclops—presents the monster as a “fier pastor” (fierce shepherd) at once echoing Dante's damned Ugolino and creating a link to Leo X as pastoral pontiff. Like Machiavelli Ariosto uses literary allusion to engage in a critique of Pope Leo and other Italian rulers, but also to stage his own problematic relationship to such figures. In larger terms, this chapter both illustrates the way in which Renaissance literature engages indirectly with menacing historical context and argues for the crucial role that formal analysis has in uncovering the “historicity” of literary texts.Less
Although Ariosto is often thought of as a literary fantasist, this chapter argues for his oblique political engagement in his romance-epic, Orlando furioso, primarily through the strategic juxtaposition of passages referring to contemporary and historical events with narratives that provide indirect and allusive commentary on them. In particular, the episode of the cannibalistic Orco (canto 17)—a carry over from Boiardo's Innamoramento di Orlando and a descendant of the Homeric Cyclops—presents the monster as a “fier pastor” (fierce shepherd) at once echoing Dante's damned Ugolino and creating a link to Leo X as pastoral pontiff. Like Machiavelli Ariosto uses literary allusion to engage in a critique of Pope Leo and other Italian rulers, but also to stage his own problematic relationship to such figures. In larger terms, this chapter both illustrates the way in which Renaissance literature engages indirectly with menacing historical context and argues for the crucial role that formal analysis has in uncovering the “historicity” of literary texts.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The playful, dislocating attitude to ancient literature is part of the delight of reading Italian epic romances. They swirl around, playing tricks, frustrating, enchanting, and getting nowhere with ...
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The playful, dislocating attitude to ancient literature is part of the delight of reading Italian epic romances. They swirl around, playing tricks, frustrating, enchanting, and getting nowhere with perfect charm. Readers have often felt this rootless detachment in the early sixteenth-century continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo, the Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. The heroes of Orlando furioso desperately seek the unbearably attractive Saracen princess Angelica, in many directions and with enormous rapidity. Whenever they reach her she vanishes, or they are unable to get their armour off to enjoy her, or with delicious wilfulness Ariosto abandons them before they achieve the consummation for which they so devoutly wish, and picks up another of the various threads of his manifold, exfoliating weave of narratives, leaving them, and us, panting. Even his own stories are not followed through to their anticipated conclusions, and are thrown away with wilful delight.Less
The playful, dislocating attitude to ancient literature is part of the delight of reading Italian epic romances. They swirl around, playing tricks, frustrating, enchanting, and getting nowhere with perfect charm. Readers have often felt this rootless detachment in the early sixteenth-century continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo, the Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. The heroes of Orlando furioso desperately seek the unbearably attractive Saracen princess Angelica, in many directions and with enormous rapidity. Whenever they reach her she vanishes, or they are unable to get their armour off to enjoy her, or with delicious wilfulness Ariosto abandons them before they achieve the consummation for which they so devoutly wish, and picks up another of the various threads of his manifold, exfoliating weave of narratives, leaving them, and us, panting. Even his own stories are not followed through to their anticipated conclusions, and are thrown away with wilful delight.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata has a very different setting. Most of its action takes place on the clear, open spaces of a plain around the city of Jerusalem. Two opposed camps are set against ...
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Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata has a very different setting. Most of its action takes place on the clear, open spaces of a plain around the city of Jerusalem. Two opposed camps are set against one another in this open space: Jerusalem is occupied by Saracen forces, while a Christian alliance under Tasso's hero, ‘pio Goffredo’, besieges them and seeks to regain the town for his religion. There are a few moments when characters wander from the battlefield into a landscape of trees and greenery, and find a pastoral seclusion that is valued above the polarities of the battle; but these are rare. However, more usually the poem matches its open setting with correspondingly clear indications of which side people are on. This limits the possibilities for the moral and narrative entanglements in which Ludovico Ariosto so delights: the very geography of Tasso's poem suggests a polarized confrontation between Christian virtue and pagan sacrilege.Less
Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata has a very different setting. Most of its action takes place on the clear, open spaces of a plain around the city of Jerusalem. Two opposed camps are set against one another in this open space: Jerusalem is occupied by Saracen forces, while a Christian alliance under Tasso's hero, ‘pio Goffredo’, besieges them and seeks to regain the town for his religion. There are a few moments when characters wander from the battlefield into a landscape of trees and greenery, and find a pastoral seclusion that is valued above the polarities of the battle; but these are rare. However, more usually the poem matches its open setting with correspondingly clear indications of which side people are on. This limits the possibilities for the moral and narrative entanglements in which Ludovico Ariosto so delights: the very geography of Tasso's poem suggests a polarized confrontation between Christian virtue and pagan sacrilege.
Colin Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117940
- eISBN:
- 9780191671135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117940.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century epic writers had to work hard to invent a modern equivalent for the conceptual idiom of classical epic, and laboured both to unpick the idioms of earlier ...
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Sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century epic writers had to work hard to invent a modern equivalent for the conceptual idiom of classical epic, and laboured both to unpick the idioms of earlier imitators and to create in the process a role for epic in their society. They improvised a modern heroic idiom, often while they composed. A sense that they had got epic wrong frequently led them to revise and extend their poems: Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Robert Sidney, and Edmund Spenser all attempted to overcome the prevalent romance view of the Aeneid by revising their epic works, by fracturing and rewriting Virgilian episodes to accommodate rival interpretations, or by continuing their poems in a more ruthless idiom. They had to break away from a part of themselves in order to feel that they could write like authors of the past. And by developing the civic aspect of classical epic they sought to explore and modify the structures of power and of emotion that sustained their society.Less
Sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century epic writers had to work hard to invent a modern equivalent for the conceptual idiom of classical epic, and laboured both to unpick the idioms of earlier imitators and to create in the process a role for epic in their society. They improvised a modern heroic idiom, often while they composed. A sense that they had got epic wrong frequently led them to revise and extend their poems: Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Robert Sidney, and Edmund Spenser all attempted to overcome the prevalent romance view of the Aeneid by revising their epic works, by fracturing and rewriting Virgilian episodes to accommodate rival interpretations, or by continuing their poems in a more ruthless idiom. They had to break away from a part of themselves in order to feel that they could write like authors of the past. And by developing the civic aspect of classical epic they sought to explore and modify the structures of power and of emotion that sustained their society.
Ritchie Robertson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199571581
- eISBN:
- 9780191722356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571581.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter explores the relation of mock epic to earlier genres. It discusses Italian romance epic, especially Ariosto's Orlando furioso, showing how it represents sexual relations with more ...
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This chapter explores the relation of mock epic to earlier genres. It discusses Italian romance epic, especially Ariosto's Orlando furioso, showing how it represents sexual relations with more freedom than serious epic; the mock‐heroic tradition, going back to the Batrachomyomachia (once attributed to Homer) and ending with Pope's Rape of the Lock; and the travesty of epic, illustrated by Scarron's and Cotton's travesties of the Aeneid, and Marivaux's travesty of the Iliad. It ends by showing how literary theories that stressed the autonomy of the literary work rejected the intertextuality which is essential to mock epic.Less
This chapter explores the relation of mock epic to earlier genres. It discusses Italian romance epic, especially Ariosto's Orlando furioso, showing how it represents sexual relations with more freedom than serious epic; the mock‐heroic tradition, going back to the Batrachomyomachia (once attributed to Homer) and ending with Pope's Rape of the Lock; and the travesty of epic, illustrated by Scarron's and Cotton's travesties of the Aeneid, and Marivaux's travesty of the Iliad. It ends by showing how literary theories that stressed the autonomy of the literary work rejected the intertextuality which is essential to mock epic.
Jane E. Everson
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198160151
- eISBN:
- 9780191716386
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198160151.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The immense success of the Italian romance or chivalric epic between the mid-14th century and the 16th century constitutes a striking paradox. The flowering of the genre, between the composition of ...
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The immense success of the Italian romance or chivalric epic between the mid-14th century and the 16th century constitutes a striking paradox. The flowering of the genre, between the composition of Boccaccio's Teseida and the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto occurred in precisely the same period as the emergence of Humanism and the revival of classical culture and literature based on re-readings of ancient texts. The two cultural phenomena — of medieval, vernacular narratives and the imitation of classical texts, veneration for classical antiquity — seem antithetical. Through an analysis of aspects of both the cultural context and major literary texts, this book shows that the traditional distinction of popular versus élite culture cannot be maintained. The book reveals a process of syncretism and symbiosis through which the romance epic adapted to the challenges posed by the classical revival, absorbing and rewriting elements of classical texts into the tradition of the matter of France and the matter of Britain to create a new ‘matter of Italy’ — texts which appealed to all levels of society.Less
The immense success of the Italian romance or chivalric epic between the mid-14th century and the 16th century constitutes a striking paradox. The flowering of the genre, between the composition of Boccaccio's Teseida and the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto occurred in precisely the same period as the emergence of Humanism and the revival of classical culture and literature based on re-readings of ancient texts. The two cultural phenomena — of medieval, vernacular narratives and the imitation of classical texts, veneration for classical antiquity — seem antithetical. Through an analysis of aspects of both the cultural context and major literary texts, this book shows that the traditional distinction of popular versus élite culture cannot be maintained. The book reveals a process of syncretism and symbiosis through which the romance epic adapted to the challenges posed by the classical revival, absorbing and rewriting elements of classical texts into the tradition of the matter of France and the matter of Britain to create a new ‘matter of Italy’ — texts which appealed to all levels of society.
Ita Mac Carthy
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691175485
- eISBN:
- 9780691189796
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691175485.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Medieval History
‘Grace’ emerges as a keyword in the culture and society of sixteenth-century Italy. This book explores how it conveys and connects the most pressing ethical, social and aesthetic concerns of an age ...
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‘Grace’ emerges as a keyword in the culture and society of sixteenth-century Italy. This book explores how it conveys and connects the most pressing ethical, social and aesthetic concerns of an age concerned with the reactivation of ancient ideas in a changing world. The book reassesses artists such as Francesco del Cossa, Raphael, and Michelangelo and explores anew writers like Castiglione, Ariosto, Tullia d'Aragona, and Vittoria Colonna. It shows how these artists and writers put grace at the heart of their work. The book argues that grace came to be as contested as it was prized across a range of Renaissance Italian contexts. It characterised emerging styles in literature and the visual arts, shaped ideas about how best to behave at court and sparked controversy about social harmony and human salvation. For all these reasons, grace abounded in the Italian Renaissance, yet it remained hard to define. The book explores what grace meant to theologians, artists, writers, and philosophers, showing how it influenced their thinking about themselves, each other and the world. It portrays grace not as a stable formula of expression but as a web of interventions in culture and society.Less
‘Grace’ emerges as a keyword in the culture and society of sixteenth-century Italy. This book explores how it conveys and connects the most pressing ethical, social and aesthetic concerns of an age concerned with the reactivation of ancient ideas in a changing world. The book reassesses artists such as Francesco del Cossa, Raphael, and Michelangelo and explores anew writers like Castiglione, Ariosto, Tullia d'Aragona, and Vittoria Colonna. It shows how these artists and writers put grace at the heart of their work. The book argues that grace came to be as contested as it was prized across a range of Renaissance Italian contexts. It characterised emerging styles in literature and the visual arts, shaped ideas about how best to behave at court and sparked controversy about social harmony and human salvation. For all these reasons, grace abounded in the Italian Renaissance, yet it remained hard to define. The book explores what grace meant to theologians, artists, writers, and philosophers, showing how it influenced their thinking about themselves, each other and the world. It portrays grace not as a stable formula of expression but as a web of interventions in culture and society.
JANE E. EVERSON
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198160151
- eISBN:
- 9780191716386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198160151.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter focuses on the themes of love and war in epic poetry. It argues that these principal themes of the romance epic of the early Renaissance are virtually preset. The question facing poets ...
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This chapter focuses on the themes of love and war in epic poetry. It argues that these principal themes of the romance epic of the early Renaissance are virtually preset. The question facing poets is not what themes to choose, but how to characterize them, how to balance them and link them together, in what style and register to express them, since the solutions to these questions will dictate the extent to which the poem can be seen as reflecting classical epic traditions. The most obvious course for the vernacular poet to follow would have been to privilege warfare at the expense of love, reducing the theme of love to a secondary role and emphasizing the coherence of the theme of war, by creating a major campaign as the backbone of the narrative structure. This is the pattern adopted by Tasso, but it is not the one adopted by any of the poets surveyed in the chapter, nor indeed by Ariosto.Less
This chapter focuses on the themes of love and war in epic poetry. It argues that these principal themes of the romance epic of the early Renaissance are virtually preset. The question facing poets is not what themes to choose, but how to characterize them, how to balance them and link them together, in what style and register to express them, since the solutions to these questions will dictate the extent to which the poem can be seen as reflecting classical epic traditions. The most obvious course for the vernacular poet to follow would have been to privilege warfare at the expense of love, reducing the theme of love to a secondary role and emphasizing the coherence of the theme of war, by creating a major campaign as the backbone of the narrative structure. This is the pattern adopted by Tasso, but it is not the one adopted by any of the poets surveyed in the chapter, nor indeed by Ariosto.
William J. Kennedy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781501700019
- eISBN:
- 9781501703812
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501700019.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter looks into Ronsard’s inspiration from the career of Ludovico Ariosto, an Italian poet, in tracing the evolution of Ronsard’s early style from the forced antiquarianism of his odes to the ...
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This chapter looks into Ronsard’s inspiration from the career of Ludovico Ariosto, an Italian poet, in tracing the evolution of Ronsard’s early style from the forced antiquarianism of his odes to the self-conscious stylization of Les Amours. Ronsard’s obsessive habits of revision attest to his commitment as a writer, revealing second thoughts about his earlier inspired verse, the aspirations of subsequent verse in relation to his evolving aesthetic, his efforts to please new patrons and a changing readership, and his canny attempts to cash in on a growing reputation. Ariosto’s career impressed Ronsard for several reasons, but two stand out. Ariosto’s lyric and epic poetry challenged Ronsard by accommodating normative Petrarchan elegance to sturdier qualities of classical form, but it also alerted him to possibilities of style embedded in both, and especially to a demanding exercise of craftsmanship and skill that would compromise the Neoplatonic doctrine of furor.Less
This chapter looks into Ronsard’s inspiration from the career of Ludovico Ariosto, an Italian poet, in tracing the evolution of Ronsard’s early style from the forced antiquarianism of his odes to the self-conscious stylization of Les Amours. Ronsard’s obsessive habits of revision attest to his commitment as a writer, revealing second thoughts about his earlier inspired verse, the aspirations of subsequent verse in relation to his evolving aesthetic, his efforts to please new patrons and a changing readership, and his canny attempts to cash in on a growing reputation. Ariosto’s career impressed Ronsard for several reasons, but two stand out. Ariosto’s lyric and epic poetry challenged Ronsard by accommodating normative Petrarchan elegance to sturdier qualities of classical form, but it also alerted him to possibilities of style embedded in both, and especially to a demanding exercise of craftsmanship and skill that would compromise the Neoplatonic doctrine of furor.
Eleonora Stoppino
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823240371
- eISBN:
- 9780823240418
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823240371.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book is a study of gender, dynastic politics, and intertextuality in medieval and renaissance chivalric epic, focusing on Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso (1516–1532). Relying on the direct ...
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This book is a study of gender, dynastic politics, and intertextuality in medieval and renaissance chivalric epic, focusing on Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso (1516–1532). Relying on the direct study of manuscripts and incunabula, it challenges the fixed distinction between medieval and early modern texts and reclaims medieval popular epic as a key source for the Furioso. Tracing the formation of the character of the warrior woman, from the Amazon to Bradamante, the book analyzes the process of gender construction in early modern Italy. By reading the tension between the representations of women as fighters, lovers, and mothers, it shows how the warrior woman is a symbolic center for the construction of legitimacy in the complex web of fears and expectations of the Northern Italian Renaissance court.Less
This book is a study of gender, dynastic politics, and intertextuality in medieval and renaissance chivalric epic, focusing on Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso (1516–1532). Relying on the direct study of manuscripts and incunabula, it challenges the fixed distinction between medieval and early modern texts and reclaims medieval popular epic as a key source for the Furioso. Tracing the formation of the character of the warrior woman, from the Amazon to Bradamante, the book analyzes the process of gender construction in early modern Italy. By reading the tension between the representations of women as fighters, lovers, and mothers, it shows how the warrior woman is a symbolic center for the construction of legitimacy in the complex web of fears and expectations of the Northern Italian Renaissance court.
Peter Mack
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691194004
- eISBN:
- 9780691195353
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691194004.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter takes a look at Orlando Furioso (1516, 1532), Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), and The Faerie Queene (1596), which are the recognized epic masterpieces of their eras. They draw in succession ...
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This chapter takes a look at Orlando Furioso (1516, 1532), Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), and The Faerie Queene (1596), which are the recognized epic masterpieces of their eras. They draw in succession on each other and on a wide range of classical and romance texts, many of them known to the first audiences of these three poems. The chapter investigates the ways in which Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Edmund Spenser used their predecessors and the different effects they achieved from a shared heritage. It examines the ways in which a series of authors used both their immediate predecessors and their sense of a long tradition of epic writing to create something new. The chapter argues that Ariosto aimed to shock and surprise his audience. Tasso reacted to Ariosto by combining a more serious and unified epic on the lines of the Iliad. Spenser's idea of devoting each book to a hero and a virtue presents a structure which is easier to comprehend than Ariosto's, yet looser and more open to surprises than Tasso's.Less
This chapter takes a look at Orlando Furioso (1516, 1532), Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), and The Faerie Queene (1596), which are the recognized epic masterpieces of their eras. They draw in succession on each other and on a wide range of classical and romance texts, many of them known to the first audiences of these three poems. The chapter investigates the ways in which Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Edmund Spenser used their predecessors and the different effects they achieved from a shared heritage. It examines the ways in which a series of authors used both their immediate predecessors and their sense of a long tradition of epic writing to create something new. The chapter argues that Ariosto aimed to shock and surprise his audience. Tasso reacted to Ariosto by combining a more serious and unified epic on the lines of the Iliad. Spenser's idea of devoting each book to a hero and a virtue presents a structure which is easier to comprehend than Ariosto's, yet looser and more open to surprises than Tasso's.
Matthew Bevis
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226652054
- eISBN:
- 9780226652221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226652221.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This final chapter ranges more widely across The Prelude in order to consider how forms of selving and humoring speak to one another, and how they speak to the vision (or version) of Wordsworth ...
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This final chapter ranges more widely across The Prelude in order to consider how forms of selving and humoring speak to one another, and how they speak to the vision (or version) of Wordsworth presented by this book. When he was looking around for epic-mock-epic models for the romancing of the self, certain writings, cherished from his childhood, would have come readily to mind, ones that should be kept in mind when reading him: eighteenth-century novels (particularly those of Sterne, Fielding, and Smollett); behind them, Cervantes; and behind him, Ariosto. The chapter closes with a sustained consideration of Wordsworth's debt to Don Quixote in The Prelude, arguing that this quixotic sense is a vital part of his ambitions for both himself and his poetry.Less
This final chapter ranges more widely across The Prelude in order to consider how forms of selving and humoring speak to one another, and how they speak to the vision (or version) of Wordsworth presented by this book. When he was looking around for epic-mock-epic models for the romancing of the self, certain writings, cherished from his childhood, would have come readily to mind, ones that should be kept in mind when reading him: eighteenth-century novels (particularly those of Sterne, Fielding, and Smollett); behind them, Cervantes; and behind him, Ariosto. The chapter closes with a sustained consideration of Wordsworth's debt to Don Quixote in The Prelude, arguing that this quixotic sense is a vital part of his ambitions for both himself and his poetry.
Lewis Lockwood
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195378276
- eISBN:
- 9780199852376
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195378276.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Based on documentary and archival research, this book provides a study of the rise of music at a vital center of Italian Renaissance culture, focusing on the patrons and musicians whose efforts gave ...
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Based on documentary and archival research, this book provides a study of the rise of music at a vital center of Italian Renaissance culture, focusing on the patrons and musicians whose efforts gave Ferrara a primary role in European music during the 15th century. The successive rulers of the Italian city-state, members of the Este dynasty, brought to Ferrara some of the most important composers of the period, including Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Martini, Jacob Obrecht, and Josquin Desprez. Moreover, Ferrara has long been famous as the seat of activity of three of the most important poets of the period — Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso — as well as for its school of painting and manuscript production and illumination. In this book Ferrara, the city-state, steps forward as a major musical center as well.Less
Based on documentary and archival research, this book provides a study of the rise of music at a vital center of Italian Renaissance culture, focusing on the patrons and musicians whose efforts gave Ferrara a primary role in European music during the 15th century. The successive rulers of the Italian city-state, members of the Este dynasty, brought to Ferrara some of the most important composers of the period, including Guillaume Dufay, Johannes Martini, Jacob Obrecht, and Josquin Desprez. Moreover, Ferrara has long been famous as the seat of activity of three of the most important poets of the period — Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso — as well as for its school of painting and manuscript production and illumination. In this book Ferrara, the city-state, steps forward as a major musical center as well.
Albert Russell Ascoli
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234288
- eISBN:
- 9780823241231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234288.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter focuses on a major work of the later sixteenth century, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, whose narrative arc is shaped by the felt need for the poem to free its characters and its author ...
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This chapter focuses on a major work of the later sixteenth century, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, whose narrative arc is shaped by the felt need for the poem to free its characters and its author from the burden of history itself, staged through the quest to “liberate” the empty tomb of Christ—symbol of the transcendence of death and the abandonment of the world of history for a haven above and beyond time. That the poem is only able to reach the literal tomb, but not to pass beyond, is a sign of the author's anxious fear that such transcendence is as impossible as it is desirable. Such an interpretation is further confirmed by the poem's deliberate evocation of its place in a literary history that, in addition to its systematic transformation of the Virgil's pagan epic of imperial conquest, includes, on one hand, the overtly transcendent vision of Dante's Commedia and, on the other, Ariosto's fierce parody thereof in Orlando.Less
This chapter focuses on a major work of the later sixteenth century, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, whose narrative arc is shaped by the felt need for the poem to free its characters and its author from the burden of history itself, staged through the quest to “liberate” the empty tomb of Christ—symbol of the transcendence of death and the abandonment of the world of history for a haven above and beyond time. That the poem is only able to reach the literal tomb, but not to pass beyond, is a sign of the author's anxious fear that such transcendence is as impossible as it is desirable. Such an interpretation is further confirmed by the poem's deliberate evocation of its place in a literary history that, in addition to its systematic transformation of the Virgil's pagan epic of imperial conquest, includes, on one hand, the overtly transcendent vision of Dante's Commedia and, on the other, Ariosto's fierce parody thereof in Orlando.
Albert Russell Ascoli
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234288
- eISBN:
- 9780823241231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234288.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter analyzes Ariosto's elaborate exploration of the politics of gender and the gendering of politics in the curious tale of the defeat of the phallocratic giant, Marganorre, by the warrior ...
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This chapter analyzes Ariosto's elaborate exploration of the politics of gender and the gendering of politics in the curious tale of the defeat of the phallocratic giant, Marganorre, by the warrior women, Marfisa and Bradamante. Like Chapter 4, this chapter suggests an unveiling of the gendered, sexualized categories that subtend not only the social relations of men and women but also the overarching legal and political order of which they are a part. Ariosto stages the ambivalence of his narrative avatar, who both exposes and reproduces the mechanisms by which male poets and patriarchal potentates keep women “beneath them.” Key elements are the poet's use of a little-known male mythological counterpart to the Medusa, Ericthonius, to dramatize the monstrous appropriation of female power by men; his play upon a symbolic proper name, Vittoria Colonna, whose declared role as emblem of female talent is cunningly absorbed into a symbolic political order at whose center stands a triumphal phallus, a “colonna.” The chapter points as well to the problem of deploying contemporary categories (Freudian, Lacanian, Derridean, or Butlerian) upon earlier periods where discourses of gender were quite different than our own. It makes the case, however, that the textual evidence lends itself readily to such an epoch-bridging encounter.Less
This chapter analyzes Ariosto's elaborate exploration of the politics of gender and the gendering of politics in the curious tale of the defeat of the phallocratic giant, Marganorre, by the warrior women, Marfisa and Bradamante. Like Chapter 4, this chapter suggests an unveiling of the gendered, sexualized categories that subtend not only the social relations of men and women but also the overarching legal and political order of which they are a part. Ariosto stages the ambivalence of his narrative avatar, who both exposes and reproduces the mechanisms by which male poets and patriarchal potentates keep women “beneath them.” Key elements are the poet's use of a little-known male mythological counterpart to the Medusa, Ericthonius, to dramatize the monstrous appropriation of female power by men; his play upon a symbolic proper name, Vittoria Colonna, whose declared role as emblem of female talent is cunningly absorbed into a symbolic political order at whose center stands a triumphal phallus, a “colonna.” The chapter points as well to the problem of deploying contemporary categories (Freudian, Lacanian, Derridean, or Butlerian) upon earlier periods where discourses of gender were quite different than our own. It makes the case, however, that the textual evidence lends itself readily to such an epoch-bridging encounter.
Albert Russell Ascoli
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234288
- eISBN:
- 9780823241231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234288.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines Machiavelli's lesser known, yet still estimable, comedy Clizia. While dramatizing, as in Chapters 4 and 7, the gendering of power and the power struggles between the genders, ...
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This chapter examines Machiavelli's lesser known, yet still estimable, comedy Clizia. While dramatizing, as in Chapters 4 and 7, the gendering of power and the power struggles between the genders, the play “performs” a studied confluence of literary and historical intertexts, blurring the boundaries between the two types of discourse, and in the process posing a number of key historiographical questions. Notably, among the intertextual relationships explored are those of Clizia to Machiavelli's own political-historical works, to Boccaccio's Decameron, Day 7, story 9 (the focus of Chapter 4), and to Ariosto's pioneering dramatic works.Less
This chapter examines Machiavelli's lesser known, yet still estimable, comedy Clizia. While dramatizing, as in Chapters 4 and 7, the gendering of power and the power struggles between the genders, the play “performs” a studied confluence of literary and historical intertexts, blurring the boundaries between the two types of discourse, and in the process posing a number of key historiographical questions. Notably, among the intertextual relationships explored are those of Clizia to Machiavelli's own political-historical works, to Boccaccio's Decameron, Day 7, story 9 (the focus of Chapter 4), and to Ariosto's pioneering dramatic works.
Andrew Hiscock
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780197266502
- eISBN:
- 9780191884221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266502.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This discussion focuses upon the production of editions and translations of Ariosto’s epic poem, the circulation of these texts and the allusions to Ariosto in the early modern, most particularly, ...
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This discussion focuses upon the production of editions and translations of Ariosto’s epic poem, the circulation of these texts and the allusions to Ariosto in the early modern, most particularly, the Elizabethan, period. During the course of this essay, attention is paid to early modern European appreciations of the Orlando Furioso in Italy, Spain and France as well as looking forward to the influence of Ariosto’s writing in English culture in subsequent centuries. In this review of the Ariostan presence in English writing and culture, a number of writers are discussed, including Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Harington and those writing for the early modern playhouses in London during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.Less
This discussion focuses upon the production of editions and translations of Ariosto’s epic poem, the circulation of these texts and the allusions to Ariosto in the early modern, most particularly, the Elizabethan, period. During the course of this essay, attention is paid to early modern European appreciations of the Orlando Furioso in Italy, Spain and France as well as looking forward to the influence of Ariosto’s writing in English culture in subsequent centuries. In this review of the Ariostan presence in English writing and culture, a number of writers are discussed, including Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Harington and those writing for the early modern playhouses in London during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.