La Poetica Dell’epica Sacra Tra Cinque E Seicento in Italia

Over the course of sixteenth century and in the early seventeenth century, a remarkable number of biblical poems were written in Italy. Their authors attempted to outdo classical authors by replacing, within the highest literary genre (e.g. epic), the false pagan divinities with the authentic Christian God. Along with these attempts came an extremely interesting, and thus far neglected, reflection on the specific features and problems raised by biblical epic. By resorting to a variety of sources (poetical treatises, letters, discourses) I deal in this article with such issues as the problem of matching poetry and sacred history; the difficulty of dealing with supernatural events and representing the invisible; the role of allegory and of the so-called meraviglioso. These are some of the most relevant poetic problems connected to biblical epic, which were also discussed at length outside Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, I deal with the increasing relevance of the allegorical meaning attached to these poems and to the consequent devaluation of the importance of ‘action’, arguing that this eventually contributed to the exhaustion of the Western tradition of epic, helping to pave the way for the new genre of the novel

Allegory · Art · EPIC · Epistemology · Literature · Meaning (existential · Poetry · Relevance (law · Variety (cybernetics · Early Modern Spanish Literature · History · Philosophy · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies · Renaissance Literature and Culture

• From Virgil to Vida

  Craig Kallendorf•Journal of the History of Ideas•1995

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