From Many Gods to One

Divine Action in Renaissance Epic

Cloth $32.50 ISBN: 9780226307558 Published December 2006

E-book $7.00 to $30.00 About E-books ISBN: 9780226307565 Published November 2009

Epic poets of the Renaissance looked to emulate the poems of Greco-Roman antiquity, but doing so presented a dilemma: what to do about the gods? Divine intervention plays a major part in the epics of Homer and Virgil—indeed, quarrels within the family of Olympian gods are essential to the narrative structure of those poems—yet poets of the Renaissance recognized that the cantankerous Olympians could not be imitated too closely. The divine action of their classical models had to be transformed to accord with contemporary tastes and Christian belief.

From Many Gods to One offers the first comparative study of poetic approaches to the problem of epic divine action. Through readings of Petrarch, Vida, Ariosto, Tasso, and Milton, Tobias Gregory describes the narrative and ideological consequences of the epic’s turn from pagan to Christian. Drawing on scholarship in several disciplines—religious studies, classics, history, and philosophy, as well as literature—From Many Gods to One sheds new light on two subjects of enduring importance in Renaissance studies: the precarious balance between classical literary models and Christian religious norms and the role of religion in drawing lines between allies and others.

Review Quotes
Contents

“An excellent book. Tobias Gregory demonstrates the artistic problems Christianity raised for the Renaissance writers who tried to revive the classical epic. He presents complex problems and issues with clarity and a sense for the apt phrase and definition.”—Michael Murrin, University of Chicago

“As one of the standard ingredients of epic poetry, divine action and presence has long been waiting for the extensive treatment Tobias Gregory provides here. From Many Gods to One is grounded in a detailed consideration of the function of gods in Virgilian and Homeric epic and demonstrates how, through imitatio, these classical models and conceptualizations of divine intervention are reformulated in the Renaissance practice of the genre. It is a fine piece of scholarship.”—Josiah Blackmore, University of Toronto

“Gregory’s book is learned, original, and eye-opening. He knows the issues involved in representing divinity in ancient epic and is able to situate the new dilemmas of Christian epic within this context. In showing how traditional form struggles to accommodate the new doctrinal challenge of the new religion, he pays equal respect to the pressures of literary form and of theology. The result is a series of fresh and rewarding readings, which greatly enhance our understanding of neoclassical epic.”—Denis Feeney, Princeton University

"In this book Gregory examines the Renaissance reinvention of the divine action of classical epic. In five chapters covering Homer to Milton, he explains how Renaissance poets confronted the problem of adapting the narrative structure of classical polytheistic epic to Christian monotheistic norms. Gregory's comparative approach will give readers an excellent sense of the distinctiveness of, and continuities between, classical and post-classical epic traditions. The book will be of particular interest to classicists working on the European epic tradition, reception studies, and neo-Latin literature, but it also makes an excellent general introduction to Renaissance epic. The clarity and fluency of Gregory's prose, and the light but judicious annotation, will add to the book's wide appeal, as will its economy—the book comes in at just over two hundred pages and at a very reasonable price to boot."—Pramit Chaudhuri, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"This lively book is a stuimulating and much-needed study of the difficulties Renaissance epic poets faced, and of some of the solutions they found, when they had to replace the Olympian deities of classical herioc poetry with a Christian God. . . . Gregory has reanimated the comparative study of the epic tradition, and reaffirmed its value."—Daniel Javitch, Renaissance Quarterly

"Gregory's hermeneutical explanations are . . . skilfully rendered, granting the reader a fresh glimpse into a known past. From Many Gods to One thus manages . . . to weave one cohesive and compelling tale: that of the demise of the epic."—Bendi Benson Schrambach, Comitatus

"An important, well researched contribution both to epic and Milton studies. . . . [Gregory's] study aims at a broad range of readers by combining a detailed and accurate summary of Renaissance epic from its Virgilian sources to its Renaissance heirs."

"The book's primary contribution is in offering a broad survey of the crucial question of the relationship between Christian conceptions of divinity and the classical models within which Renaissance poets attempted to represent those conceptions. . . . It is a pleasure to read a book written with such clarity."

"[A] bright and delightfully readable study of divinity and divine action in epic poetry."

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations and a Note on Translations

Introduction

CHAPTER 1
The Polytheistic Model:
Homer and Virgil

CHAPTER 2
Neo-Latin Epic:
Petrarch and Vida

CHAPTER 3
Providence, Irony, and Magic:
Orlando furioso

CHAPTER 4
With God on Our Side:
Gerusalemme liberata

CHAPTER 5
The Tragedy of Creaturely Error:
Paradise Lost

Afterword
Works Cited
Index

For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu

Classical Studies

History: Ancient and Classical History | European History

Literature and Literary Criticism: British and Irish Literature | Classical Languages | Poetry | Romance Languages

Religion: Christianity | Religion and Literature

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