The Choice of Odysseus: Homeric Ethics in Renaissance Epic and Opera (Classical Presences)

The Choice of Odysseus demonstrates how the Odyssey provided Renaissance authors and readers with a poetic ethics―tools for living developed in poetry―to navigate the challenges of their age. As they endured schisms, ruptures, and failures of ideals, readers and poets turned to the Odyssey for narratives of recovery and aftermath. Sarah Van der Laan reconstructs Renaissance readings of the Odyssey from myriad sources. Situating major works by Petrarch, Poliziano, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Monteverdi, and Milton in these Odyssean contexts, she recovers a powerful Renaissance tradition of Odyssean epic. Renaisance poets adopted the Odyssey as an epic model that supplements and even opposes the Virgilian epic model of conquest and imperial foundation. For Renaissance readers and authors, the Odyssey renders heroic other kinds of lived experience: the necessity of facing the world and its challenges with only human wisdom and reason; the ability to integrate traumatic detours and reversals into a vision of a successful and accomplished self; the recovery of a private life and personal desires painfully suspended for public service. Emphasizing marriage, reconciliation, homecoming, and the return to private life and private desires as suitably heroic matter for epic and powerful conventions for narrative and poetic closure, the Renaissance Odyssey and the epics and operas it inspired confer a uniquely heroic status on experience for men and women alike. Cover Classical Presences The Choice of Odysseus: Homeric Ethics in Renaissance Epic and Opera Copyright Dedication Acknowledgements Contents Note on Texts and Translations Introduction The Choice of Odysseus (I): Homeric Alternatives to Virgilian Paradigms The Choice of Penelope: Odyssean Marriage as Epic Matter and Epic Telos The Choice of Odysseus (II): A New (Old) Reading of Odyssey 7 Parenthesis: Counter factual Narratives and Heroic Prudence The Choice of Odysseus in Renaissance Epic 1: Speaking with Homer: Authorizing Conversations and Dream Visions in Petrarch and Poliziano Petrarch Poliziano 2: Ariosto’s Fractured Odysseys: Allusive Interlace and the Limits of Exemplarity in Orlando furioso From Poliziano to Ariosto: Humanism and the Schoolroom A Case Study in Odyssean Failure: Norandino Unending Odysseys: Medoro, Angelica, Orlando The Choice of Odysseus: Rinaldo Ariosto’s Odyssean Endings: Bradamante, Ruggiero, Leone 3: From Public Duty to Private Pleasures: Odyssean Eros and Heroism in Gerusalemme liberata Theory and Practice, Renaissance and Modern Homer’s Armida: From Circe to Nausicaa Rinaldo’s Choice of Odysseus Rinaldo’s Odyssean Education: Allusion and Allegory Tasso’s Odyssean Ending Epic Romance? 4: Spenser’s Legends of Sōphrosunē: Temperance, Chastity, and Odyssean Eros in The Faerie Queene Moral Allegory and the Problem of Temperate Pleasure Guyon’s ‘Choice of Odysseus’: The Rejection of Eros Siren Pleasures The Destruction of Eros: The Legend of Temperance and the Bower of Bliss The Recovery of Odyssean Eros: The Legend of Chastity Fugitive Eros: Second Thoughts 5: The Choice of Penelope: Exemplary Women and Exemplary Marriage in Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria Setting the Scene: Duelling Prologues From Clever to Chaste: Penelope’s Exemplary Web and the Nature of Homophrosunē Penelope’s Astutia Celebrated Penelope’s Astutia Censored Unweaving and Reweaving: Rehabilitating Penelope in Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria From Page to Stage: Restoring Homophrosunē to Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria The Choice of Penelope: Exemplarity in Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria 6: Milton’s Odyssean Ethics: Arminian Theology and Homeric Heroism in Paradise Lost Openings: Odyssey 1 and Paradise Lost 3 7: Falling into Epic: The Choice of Odysseus and the Road to Redemption in Paradise Lost Setting the Odyssean Scene: Eden and Scheria The Choice of Odysseus in malo: Satan’s Seduction of Eve The Choice of Odysseus in bono: Adam’s Fall Milton’s Odyssean Marriage: Homophrosunē and Female Heroism after the Fall The Sinews of Ulysses: Odyssean Epic as Postlapsarian Idea Bibliography Primary Sources Index The Choice of Odysseus demonstrates how the Odyssey provided Renaissance authors and readers with a poetic ethics-tools for living developed in poetry-to navigate the challenges of their age. As they endured schisms, ruptures, and failures of ideals, readers and poets turned to the Odyssey for narratives of recovery and aftermath. Sarah Van der Laan reconstructs Renaissance readings of the Odyssey from myriad situating major works by Petrarch, Poliziano, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Monteverdi, and Milton in these Odyssean contexts, it recovers a powerful Renaissance tradition of Odyssean epic. Renaisance poets adopted the Odyssey as an epic model that supplements and even opposes the Virgilian epic model of conquest and imperial foundations. For Renaissance readers and authors, the Odyssey renders heroic other kinds of lived the necessity of facing the world and its challenges with only human wisdom and reason; the ability to integrate traumatic detours and reversals into a vision of a successful and accomplished self; the recovery of a private life and personal desires painfully suspended for public service. Emphasizing marriage, reconciliation, homecoming, and the return to private life and private desires as suitably heroic matter for epic and powerful conventions for narrative and poetic closure, the Renaissance Odyssey and the epics and operas it inspired confer a uniquely heroic status on experience for men and women alike.