摘要：This article examines the poetical construction of a hero and his enemies in two early seventeenth-century Italian poems about the siege of Antwerp (1584–85), Anversa Liberata and Anversa Conquistata (1609). It explores the adaptations of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata and Conquistata that made these models suitable to the new subject of the poems. From this perspective, we argue that the authors were more than servile epigones of Tasso, as the adaptations of Tasso’s Gerusalemme in both poems created a compromise between the literary tradition and the historical context. The Dutch rebels, being reminiscences of Argillano’s revolt, are characterised both as an errant enemy and a convertible community. Their double status enhances the complementary poetic representation of Alessandro Farnese, the army general fighting them as a clement “pious” hero. These representations and adaptations made it possible for the poems to finish with the reconversion of the Calvinist rebels and therefore both poems can be defined as “epic poems of reconciliation.”
Loading...
