Epic and empire : politics and generic form from Virgil to Milton / David Quint.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Quint, David, 1950- author.

Series:

Literature in history (Princeton, N.J.)

Literature in history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Epic poetry--History and criticism.

Epic poetry.

Literature and history.

Literary form.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (448 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1993]

Summary:

Alexander the Great, according to Plutarch, carried on his campaigns a copy of the Iliad, kept alongside a dagger; on a more pronounced ideological level, ancient Romans looked to the Aeneid as an argument for imperialism. In this major reinterpretation of epic poetry beginning with Virgil, David Quint explores the political context and meanings of key works in Western literature. He divides the history of the genre into two political traditions: the Virgilian epics of conquest and empire that take the victors' side (the Aeneid itself, Camoes's Lusíadas, Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata) and the countervailing epic of the defeated and of republican liberty (Lucan's Pharsalia, Ercilla's Araucana, and d'Aubigné's Les tragiques). These traditions produce opposing ideas of historical narrative: a linear, teleological narrative that belongs to the imperial conquerors, and an episodic and open-ended narrative identified with "romance," the story told of and by the defeated. Quint situates Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained within these rival traditions. He extends his political analysis to the scholarly revival of medieval epic in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to Sergei Eisenstein's epic film, Alexander Nevsky. Attending both to the topical contexts of individual poems and to the larger historical development of the epic genre, Epic and Empire provides new models for exploring the relationship between ideology and literary form.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE. EPIC AND THE WINNERS

ONE. EPIC AND EMPIRE: VERSIONS OF ACTIUM

TWO. REPETITION AND IDEOLOGY IN THE AENEID

PART TWO. EPIC AND THE LOSERS

THREE. THE EPIC CURSE AND CAMOES' ADAMASTOR

FOUR. EPICS OF THE DEFEATED: THE OTHER TRADITION OF LUCAN, ERCILLA, AND D'AUBIGNE

PART THREE. TASSO AND MILTON

FIVE. POLITICAL ALLEGORY IN THE GERUSALEMME LIBERATA

SIX. TASSO, MILTON, AND THE BOAT OF ROMANCE

SEVEN. PARADISE LOST AND THE FALL OF THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH

EIGHT. DAVID'S CENSUS: MILTON'S POLITICS AND PARADISE REGAINED

PART FOUR. A MODERN EPILOGUE

NINE. OSSIAN, MEDIEVAL "EPIC," AND EISENSTEIN'S ALEXANDER NEVSKY

NOTES

INDEX

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [369]-426) and index.

ISBN:

9780691015200

0691015201

OCLC:

1231563356