A Christological Metamorphosis in a Baroque poem

Hidden between the exuberant lines (forty-two thousand of them) of the most baroque among baroque poems (L’Adone, by Giovan Battista Marino, first published in Paris in 1623, and soon after inscribed in the Index librorum prohibitorum) is the story of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to offer a description of all the elements leading to the identification of the protagonist, Adonis, with Christ; and to submit an interpretation of the disquieting mythological re-incarnation