The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic - (Early Modern Exchange) by Andrea Moudarres (Paperback)

About the Book

In The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic, Andrea Moudarres examines influential works from the literary canon of the Italian Renaissance, arguing that hostility consistently arises from within political or religious entities. In Dante's Divina Commedia, Luigi Pulci's Morgante, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, enmity is portrayed as internal, taking the form of tyranny, betrayal, and civil discord.

Book Synopsis

In The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic, Andrea Moudarres examines influential works from the literary canon of the Italian Renaissance, arguing that hostility consistently arises from within political or religious entities. In Dante's Divina Commedia, Luigi Pulci's Morgante, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, enmity is portrayed as internal, taking the form of tyranny, betrayal, and civil discord. Moudarres reads these works in the context of historical and political patterns, demonstrating that there was little distinction between public and private spheres in Renaissance Italy and, thus, little differentiation between personal and political enemies.

Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Review Quotes

A significant contribution to a number of fields: Dante studies, medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, comparative epic, the politics of literature, and global studies. Interdisciplinary and intercultural, this study provides a deeper understanding of major works from Dante to Tasso by viewing the theme of violence and/or war as well as the representation of the enemy, uncovering variations and parallels not treated in previous scholarship.

--Jo Ann Cavallo, Professor of Italian, Columbia University, author of The World beyond Europe in the Romance Epics of Boiardo and Ariosto

About the Author

Andrea Moudarres is Assistant Professor of Italian at UCLA and coeditor, with Christiana Purdy Moudarres, of New Worlds and the Italian Renaissance: Contributions to the History of European Intellectual Culture.