Reconstructs Renaissance readings of the Odyssey to reveal how it became the genre model for epic, ending in homecoming and marriage rather than conquest
Uncovers facets of Homeric reception in the Renaissance providing a context for new readings of Renaissance epic poetry and opera
Draws on contemporary theories of allusion and intertextuality to trace conversations between individual epics and operas and the Odyssey
The Choice of Odysseus demonstrates how the Odyssey provided Renaissance authors and readers with a poetic ethics for their age. Sarah Van der Laan reconstructs Renaissance readings of the Odyssey by Petrarch, Poliziano, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Monteverdi, and Milton to recover a powerful Renaissance tradition of Odyssean epic.
Contents
Introduction
1 Speaking with Homer: Authorizing Conversations and Dream Visions in Petrarch and Poliziano
2 Ariosto's Fractured Odysseys: Allusive Interlace and the Limits of Exemplarity in the Orlando furioso
3 From Public Duty to Private Pleasures: Odyssean Eros and Heroism in Gerusalemme Liberata
4 Spenser's Legends of S?phrosun?: Temperance, Chastity, and Odyssean Eros in The Faerie Queene
5 The Choice of Penelope: Exemplary Women and Exemplary Marriage in Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
6 Milton's Odyssean Ethics: Arminian Theology and Homeric Heroism in Paradise Lost
7 Falling into Epic: The Choice of Odysseus and the Road to Redemption in Paradise Lost