Renaissance poets knew the ancient epics of both Homer and Virgil, but the latter’s Aeneid appealed to them more than the Iliad and the Odyssey. First, Aeneid could be read in its Latin original whereas Homer’s Greek was impossible for most writers. More important, Virgil’s epic celebrated the destiny of the ancestors of Italy and glorified the city of Rome, enhancing the Aeneid for early Italian humanists. As Homer wrote about great heroes, Virgil wrote about the history of a great people. The nationalistic tendencies of western Europe caused poets to look to Virgil as their model. Virgil also was considered a proto-Christian writer, as interpreted by allegorists during the Middle Ages, and Dante had selected Virgil as his guide through the underworld of the Divine Comedy. Homer, nonetheless, was revered because he was the first to create poetry in the hallowed epic mode. Angelo Poliziano (1454-94), a renowned Hellenist and poet in Latin as well as Italian, not only translated Homer into Latin hexameters (the meter of the Aeneid), but also presented his inaugural lecture on Homer’s work. One poet who did emulate Homer in an epic poem was Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550) in his Italia liberata (Italy liberated) of 1547, written in blank verse. Writers often referred to Homer when discussing epic and structured their own works to be more like the Aeneid. Poets even attempted to structure their career to emulate that of Virgil, creating pastoral eclogues during their youth and later attempting to write an epic. Only a few managed to succeed, partly because epic is a daunting form. Sustaining story and meter for the length required by epic poetry was found to be a Herculean task. Pierre Ronsard (1524-85), leader of the Pleiade group of poets in France, managed to write only the first four books of La Franciade (1572), though he had planned an epic of 20 books.
Os Lustadas (The Luciads or The sons of Lusus, 1572) by Luis de Camoes (between 1517 and 1524-80) is the great national epic of the Portuguese Renaissance, and one of the most successful epic poems of European literature. Written in 10 cantos and modeled on the Aeneid, Os Lustadas relates the history of Portugal through the narration of the explorer Vasco da Gama (c. 1460-1524) as he sails to India in 1497-98. Classical deities are involved in the voyage, as Venus supports the enterprise while Bacchus attempts to sabotage it. The poetry is rich and lush, full of sea imagery and of the wonders of the East. Camoes’s personal history enhanced the reception of his epic in Portugal. Imprisoned because of a brawl in Lisbon, he was sent to India in 1553 as a soldier and eventually served eight viceroys and spent time in Macao (China) as well. He wrote Os Lustadas in India, narrowly survived a shipwreck, and salvaged his manuscript. Had the Spaniards not taken control of Portugal in 1580, Os Lustadas might have been translated into English before 1655 and thus could have influenced Spenser in his own epic poem, The Faerie Queene (discussed previously). Although Camoes’s epic was famous throughout Portugal during the late Renaissance, it was not well known in the rest of Europe.
Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe
Other Renaissance authors created a new type of long narrative poem, based on chivalric romance. By far the most popular work in this mode was Orlando furioso (Mad Orlando, 1516, 1521, 1532) of Ariosto, written in octave stanzas. The poem was not only an epic in its conception, but also a parody, responding to Matteo Boiardo’s (1441-94) unfinished romance Orlando innamorato (Orlando in love, 1495). Although the tone of Orlando furioso switches between romance and epic, many of Ariosto’s contemporaries who commented on the work praised its epic qualities. Set in the historic time of Charlemagne, the poem was used as a vehicle to comment on contemporary issues, such as military alliances and war machinery. By 1600 more than 100 editions had appeared, placing Orlando furioso among the top-selling books of the Renaissance. As some critics argued that the poem was actually better than the epics of classical antiquity, Ariosto’s poem achieved its own status as a classic. Editions published during the latter 16th century even included commentary, historical notes, and other sorts of additions that usually accompanied texts of ancient Greek and Latin authors.
World History
