Adonis: The Myth of the Dying God in the Italian Renaissance

Description

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 earliest 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. FC Half title Title Copyright Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations Preface Introduction 1 An ancient myth revisited: Adonis as citrus tree Pontano and the myth of Adonis The solar myth in Pontano’s Urania The Garden of the Hesperides Competition with the ancients The search for the Hesperides Adonis as citrus tree New myths out of ancient verse 2 Adonis and the Renaissance idyll The legacy of Pontano The pitfalls of inventiveness Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the eclogue Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the stanzaic poem Ovid’s Adonis in translation 3 Adonis in sixteenth-century mythography Early attempts at a new mythography Lelio Gregorio Giraldi’s pagan gods Natale Conti’s explanation of myths The solar myth of Adonis in decorative cycles 4 Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (i): From pastoral to epic poem Marino’s life and works An outline of the Adone Origin and growth of the ‘grand poem’ Transgressive pastorals Jean Chapelain’s defence of the Adone The poem and the myth From myth to contemporary chronicle 5 Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (ii): The king’s poem The poem and the court Binet’s Adonis and Le Breton’s Adonis ‘Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child’ ‘The king never dies’ Adonis as the born-again king The king’s heart 6 The seventeenth-century aftermath The legacy of Marino’s Adone Marino’s Adone and the Index of Forbidden Books Adonis and the theological debate Return to the Hesperides – Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index of manuscripts Index of principal passages cited Index of names