Description
Book SynopsisTwo allegorical ancient Greek stories about a young hero’s career- defining choice are shown in this book to have later been appropriated to radically differing effects. E.g. a male’s choice between female personifications can morph into a female’s choice between the same, or between various male personifications. Never before have so many instances of this process from art, literature, music, even landscape gardening, been culled. Illustrations, mainly colour, many brought into this context for the first time, are conveniently incorporated into the text, thus mimetically mirroring a central theme of the book, the process of ‘visualising the verbal, verbalising the visual.’
Table of ContentsContents Preface List of Illustrations Editions and Translations, Restricted to Heracles at the Crossroads Part 1: Heracles at the Crossroads A Note on Nomenclature 1 Visual Art Introduction Appendix: Reynolds’ Parody Itself Parodied Transition A Precocious Heracles at the Crossroads The Encounter as Dream-Vision Heracles as Christ Christ as Heracles Variations on the Theme Two Iconographically Eccentric Versions: Veronese and Dürer Appendix: Georg Stiernhielm’s Hercules Heracles at the Crossroads in Eighteenth-Century English Landscape Gardening 2 Music Appendix: The Illustrations to Metastasio’s Libretto for Alcide Al Bivio 3 Literature and Drama Prodicus and The Judgement of Paris Appendix: DE SILENO ET CHROMI ET MNASYLO 4 Pleasure and Virtue Reconciled Appendix: Andrew Marvell’s Upon Appleton House 5 Parody and Pastiche Final Reflections on Prodicus’ Heracles at the Crossroads Appendix: Panofsky’s Hercules Am Scheidewege Endnote: The Absence of Visual Depictions of Heracles at the Crossroads from Antiquity Part 2: The Judgement of Paris A Note on Nomenclature 6 The Judgement of Paris: The Story’s Original Form The Story’s Original Form 7 Medieval Literature and Art 8 Renaissance Art Onwards Appendix: Raphael to Manet and Beyond 9 Literature and Drama 10 Music Appendix: ‘The Frost, the Sun, and the Wind’ 11 Parody and Pastiche Endnote: Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress II: The Rake’s Levée Postscript and Transition Annex 1 Xenophon’s Memorabilia in Modern English Translation 2 Addison’s Translation of Heracles at the Crossroads 3 William Shenstone The Judgement of Hercules 4 Robert Lowth The Choice of Hercules 5 Georg Friedrich Handel The Choice of Hercules 6 James Beattie The Judgement of Paris 7 Thomas Parnell The Judgement of Paris 8 William Congreve Libretto for The Judgement of Paris Richmond Lattimore Hercules at the Crossroads Bibliography Index
