Description
Book SynopsisThis text examines the ways that Classical and Renaissance epic poems often work against their expressed moral and political values. It combines a formal and tropological analysis that stresses difference and disjunction with a political analysis of the epics figurative economy.
Trade Review'A powerful, compelling, and original study. It will make a difference; it will stir up healthy argument; it will suggest a new way to deal with the currently pressing controversy between the claims of formalist and political orientations toward reading. The major accomplishment of the book is the deployment of the basic action/figure schema in the service of a transgressive approach that might be termed politicoformalist. And the major strength of the book is the profundity, originality, and persuasiveness of the reading of texts generated by the application of that schema.'Harry Berger, Jr., University of California, Santa Cruz
Table of ContentsIntroduction: ideology and trope in epic argument Part I. The Ancient Epic: 1. The politics of the simile in the Iliad 2. The Aeneid: the power of the figure 3. The figurative economy of the Aenid Part II. Versions of the Renaissance Epic: 4. The epistemologies of errantry in The Faerie Queene 5. The politics of allegory in The Faerie Queene 6. The compulsion of Trope: two paradigms notes Index of citations General index.
