Evil and omnipotence in Renaissance epic.

In adapting the epic genre to Christianity, early modern poets replaced the multiple, capricious gods of greco-roman epic with the single, omnipotent God of Christianity. In doing so, they encountered structural questions unknown to their classical precursors. How is an infinite being to be represented? Given God's omnipotence, how is epic conflict to be rendered meaningful? Given God's benevolence, how is mortal suffering to be understood? This study explores the consequences of the shift from polytheism to monotheism in epic narrative, with focus on three poems: Gerusalemme liberata, The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost. Chapter 1 sets out the problematic. The multiple Olympian gods, who pursue their own interests within a generally harmonious community, provide a framework for sustaining epic conflict as the single Christian God does not. In Homeric and Virgilian epic the question of divine benevolence is left dramatically open; the power of the gods is neither good nor evil, but simply is. The Christian tradition, however, is committed to the belief that its deity is ultimately benevolent, and this commitment raises questions of theodicy. Chapter Two, Tasso's God, analyzes the divine action in Gerusalemme liberata. Tasso's poem features a partisan deity who declares His support for the crusaders at the poem's outset, yet the considerable leeway allowed to the devils raises unanswered questions about the Almighty's motives and timing. The problem of evil haunts the shadows of the Liberata, however, and contributes to its unresolved tensions. In the third chapter, Shadowing intervention: on the politics of The Faerie Queene V I revaluate the political allegory in an often misunderstood section of Spenser's poem. Drawing on recent Tudor English and Irish historiography, I argue against the prevailing critical view that the topical evocations of Book V aim to glorify recent Elizabethan foreign policy; Spenser's allegorical retelling of recent historical events carries a political charge which is by no means wholly celebratory. The fourth chapter discusses Milton's uniquely direct approach to the structural problem of devilish resistance. In Satan's ongoing practice of self-deception, Milton presents a summa and reductio ad absurdum of an extensive tradition of devilish rhetoric.Ph.D.Comparative literatureEnglish literatureLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsRomance literatureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132145/2/9959769.pd