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. |
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... father Poseidon , condemns Odysseus to long years of wandering , loss of his companions , and a troubled return home . Zeus prevents none of this even though he favors Odysseus and will not allow his death . In the Aeneid , Jupiter ...
... Father as a speaking character raised representational problems, as students of Milton are well aware. How will a poet presume to write lines for God? What will the Almighty have to say? In what accents does he speak? To whom? Though ...
... Father such as Michelangelo's broad- shouldered deity on the Sistine Chapel ceiling would not be understood as a literal likeness, but neither would it be understood as figurative in the same sense as a Renaissance. 18. Obras completas ...
... Father, God the Son, Satan, angels, or devils, they were not merely imitating Homer and Virgil, mutatis mutandis; they were participating in an anthropomorphic tendency rooted in the Christian religion from its Hebrew origins. They ...
... Father himself gives voice to the great dualism of Christian eschatology : eternal life in heaven for his good and faithful servants , eternal death in hell for all the rest . These alternate strains in Christian epic reflect the ...
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 |