From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance EpicEpic poets of the Renaissance looked to emulate the poems of Greco-Roman antiquity, but doing so presented a dilemma: what to do about the gods? Divine intervention plays a major part in the epics of Homer and Virgil—indeed, quarrels within the family of Olympian gods are essential to the narrative structure of those poems—yet poets of the Renaissance recognized that the cantankerous Olympians could not be imitated too closely. The divine action of their classical models had to be transformed to accord with contemporary tastes and Christian belief. |
Contents
1 | |
Homer and Virgil | 31 |
EpicPetrarch and Vida | 56 |
Orlando furioso | 102 |
Gerusalemme liberata | 140 |
Paradise Lost | 178 |
AFTERWORD | 217 |
WORKS CITED | 225 |
INDEX | 237 |