Ambivalent Allegories

Mehltretter, Florian (2021): Ambivalent Allegories. Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (1623) between Censorship and Hermeneutic Freedom. In: Vöhler, Martin; Fuhrer, Therese und Frangoulidis, Stavros (eds.) : Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature. Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 114. Berlin: De Gruyter. pp. 351-364

Abstract

Marino’s epic on the love between Venus and Adonis contains elements that were judged heretical at the time of its publication in 1623; indeed, the book was put on the index librorum prohibitorum in 1624. In an ultimately futile attempt to render his poem immune against censorship, Marino had integrated an allegorical level of meaning into the text itself and, at the same time, furnished it with a paratextual ‘allegoria’. The article shows the ambiguous interference of the literal meaning of the text, its possible internal allegories, and the external allegory provided by the paratexts, which goes beyond its original purpose of keeping the censors in the dark and contributes to the aesthetic texture of the poem as a work of art.

• Item Type: Book Section
• Faculties: Languages and Literatures > Department 2 > Italian Philology
• Subjects: 400 Language > 450 Italian, Romanian, and related languages
• ISBN: 978-3-11-071581-1 ; 978-3-11-071584-2 ; 9783110715415
• Place of Publication: Berlin
• Language: English