The Quest for Epic

by Looney, Dennis; Hill, Sally, Ph.D.; Ascoli, Albert Russell

• ISBN13: 9780802093738
• ISBN10: 0802093736
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-27
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

Translated here for the first time into English, Sergio Zatti'sThe Quest for Epic is a selection of studies on the two major poets of the Italian Renaissance, Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso, by one of the most important literary critics writing in Italy today. An original and challenging work, The Quest for Epic documents the development of Italian narrative from the chivalric romance at the end of the fifteenth century to the genre of epic in the sixteenth century.Zatti focuses on Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, written in the early 1500s, and progresses to Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, written at the end of the century, but also touches briefly on Boiardo, Ariosto's great predecessor at the Estense court in Ferrara, as well as on Pulci, Trissino, and many other Italian writers of the period. Zatti highlights the critical debates over narrative form in the sixteenth century that become signposts on the way to literary modernity and the eventual rise of the modern novel. Albert Russell Ascoli's introduction provides context by mapping Zatti's criticism and situating it among Italian and Anglo-American literary critical studies, making a case for the contribution this book will have for English-language readers.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	1	(12)
ALBERT RUSSELL ASCOLI
1 The Furioso between Epos and Romance	13	(25)
2 The Quest: Considerations on the Form of the Furioso	38	(22)
3 Turpin's Role: Poetry and Truth in the Furioso	60	(35)
4 Tasso versus Ariosto?	95	(19)
5 The Shattering of the Chivalric World: Ariosto's Cinque canti	114	(21)
6 Christian Uniformity, Pagan Multiplicity	135	(25)
7 Errancy, Infirmity, and Conquest: Figures of Conflict	160	(35)
8 Torquato Tasso: Epic in the Age of Dissimulation	195	(22)
Notes	217	(76)
Bibliography	293	(14)
Index	307