Adonis The Myth of the Dying God in the Italian Renaissance

by Caruso, Carlo

• ISBN13: 9781780932149
• ISBN10: 1780932146
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-02-06
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Academic

Summary

In this detailed treatment of the myth of Adonis in post-Classical times, Carlo Caruso provides an overview of the main texts, both literary and scholarly, in Latin and in the vernacular, which secured for the Adonis myth a unique place in the Early Modern revival of Classical mythology. While aiming to provide this general outline of the myth's 'fortunes' in the Early Modern age, the book also addresses three points of primary interest, on which most of the original research included in the work has been conducted. First, the myth's first significant revival in the age of Italian Humanism, and particularly in the poetry of the great Latin poet and humanist Giovanni Pontano. Secondly, the diffusion of syncretistic interpretations of the Adonis myth by means of authoritative sixteenth-century mythological encyclopaedias. Thirdly, the allegorical/political use of the Adonis myth in G.B. Marino's (1569-1625) Adone, published in Paris in 1623 to celebrate the Bourbon dynasty and to support their legitimacy with regard to the throne of France.

Author Biography

Carlo Caruso is Head of Italian at the University of Durham, UK. He has published widely in the areas of the classical tradition, the history of verse forms, literature and the arts from humanism to neo-classicism, literature and myth, literature and music, comparative literature (particularly Anglo-Italian), travel literature and the history of scholarship. He is the author of critical editions of Paolo Rolli, Libretti per Musica; Paolo Giovio, Ritratti, and Diomede Borghese, Orazioni Accademiche.

Table of Contents

Introduction
An Ancient Myth Revisited: Adonis as Citrus Tree
Adonis and the Renaissance Idyll
Adonis and the New Mythography
G.B. Marino's 'Adone' (1): From Pastoral to Epic Poetry
G.B. Marino's 'Adone' (2): The King's Poem
The Seventeenth-Century Aftermath
Epilogue
Index