The Augustinian Epic, Petrarch to Milton

The Augustinian Epic, Petrarch to Milton rewrites the history of the Renaissance Vergilian epic by incorporating the neo-Latin side of the story alongside the vernacular one, revealing how epics spoke to each other “across the language gap” and together comprised a single, “Augustinian tradition” of epic poetry. Beginning with Petrarch’s Africa, Warner offers major new interpretations of Renaissance epics both famous and forgotten—from Milton’s Paradise Lost to a Latin Christiad by his near-contemporary, Alexander Ross—thereby shedding new light on the development of the epic genre. For advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars in the fields of Italian, English, and Comparative literatures as well as the Classics and the history of religion and literature.