Front cover image for Epic and empire : Politics and generic form from Virgil to Milton

Epic and empire : Politics and generic form from Virgil to Milton

A major reinterpretation of epic poetry, which explores the political context and meanings of key words in Western literature. The history of the genre is divided into two political traditions: the Virgilian epic of conquest and the epic of republican liberty.
Print Book, English, 1993
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1993
X, 433 p. ; 24 cm.
9780691069425, 9780691015200, 0691069425, 0691015201
1023919738
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction3Pt. 1Epic and the Winners191Epic and Empire: Versions of Actium212Repetition and Ideology in the Aeneid50Pt. 2Epic and the Losers973The Epic Curse and Camoes' Adamastor994Epics of the Defeated: The Other Tradition of Lucan, Ercilla, and d'Aubigne131Pt. 3Tasso and Milton2115Political Allegory in the Gerusalemme liberata2136Tasso, Milton, and the Boat of Romance2487Paradise Lost and the Fall of the English Commonwealth2688David's Census: Milton's Politics and Paradise Regained325Pt. 4A Modern Epilogue3419Ossian, Medieval "Epic," and Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky343Notes to the Chapters369Index427