The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic

Robert Durling’s critical and historical study is the first to deal systematically with the relation of Renaissance epic to the tradition of rhetorical self-awareness which was one of the chief legacies of classical antiquity. In close examinations of four epics, he relates the figure of the narrating poet to the themes and structures of the respective works. Attention is also devoted to Roman and medieval influences on these Renaissance poems, in particular to a tradition of self-contradiction and self-mockery which extends from Horace and Ovid to Spenser and—ultimately—to Fielding, Sterne, and Byron. Acknowledgments CONTENTS Introduction Part One ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL INFLUENCES I Two Roman Poets II Chaucer III Petrarch Part Two FOUR RENAISSANCE EPICS IV Boiardo V Ariosto VI Tasso VII Spenser NOTES Index