The Augustinian Epic, Petrarch to Milton »

The Augustinian Epic, Petrarch to Milton rewrites the history of the Renaissance Vergilian epic by incorporating the neo-Latin side of the story alongside the vernacular one, revealing how epics spoke to each other "across the language gap" and together comprised a single, "Augustinian tradition" of epic poetry. Beginning with Petrarch's Africa, Warner offers major new interpretations of Renaissance epics both famous and forgotten—from Milton's Paradise Lost to a Latin Christiad by his near-contemporary, Alexander Ross—thereby shedding new light on the development of the epic genre. For advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars in the fields of Italian, English, and Comparative literatures as well as the Classics and the history of religion and literature.

Contents Introduction Petrarch's Culpa and Augustine's Counsel....................1
1 Petrarch's Culpa and the Allegory of the Africa....................20
2 Renaissance Allegories of the Aeneid The Doctrine of the Two Venuses and the Epic of the Two Cities....................51
3 Petrarch's Culpa in Gerusalemme liberata....................74
4 The Epic Imitation of Christ Marco Girolamo Vida's Christiad....................108
5 Vergil the Evangelist The Christiad of Alexander Ross....................135
6 Augustinian Epic in Paradise Lost....................156
Afterword Augustinian Epic in Romance Epic-Reflections on Spenser's Faerie Queene....................183
Notes....................195
Bibliography....................245
Index....................265