Euphorion

Vernon Lee's Euphorion is a graceful, wide-ranging study of the antique and medieval elements that shaped the Renaissance imagination. In essays on portraiture, poetry, and love, it asks how art transforms its material, how beauty can arise from style and rendering rather than subject alone, and how older traditions survive in new forms of expression. The book moves from the visual art of portraiture to the enchanted world of Matteo Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, celebrating Renaissance romance even as it mourns the political and cultural collapse that ended its optimism. At its heart, Euphorion traces the history of medieval love: from Dante's sacred devotion to Beatrice, through troubadours, knights, and legendary lovers, to Petrarch, Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare. Lee treats courtly love as a powerful cultural invention—idealized, devotional, and spiritually charged—while also questioning its reality as social practice. Across these studies, she shows romance fading into skepticism, yet surviving as the source of enduring poetic beauty. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.