AOQU (Achilles Orlando Quixote Ulysses). Journal on Epic
«AOQU. Achilles Orlando Quixote Ulysses» is the offspring of four scholars of University of Milan interested in Italian epic poem in ottavas. The Journal aims to be a place for scholars from multiple disciplines to discuss on Epics beyond languages, cultures, ages. Epic poetry will be seen as a cultural, moral and ideological model, defining self-perception in history and society, in relationship with other cultures, ideologies as well as collective imagination. The Journal welcomes essays in Italian, English, French or Spanish, exploring the role of Epic model (as a genre proper, or as a register) in different cultures up to date, even besides literature. The Journal, furthermore, will host monographic issues on specific topics.
Copyright (c) 2025 AOQU (Achilles Orlando Quixote Ulysses). Journal on Epic
Italo Svevo and the vexations of the "father" of the "Orlando Furioso": senility and madness in the "Ariosto governatore"
The essay analyses the “Ariosto’s function” within an unfinished early theatrical work by Italo Svevo. The text, generally not very studied, is of significant interest for investigating the vitality of the author of Orlando furioso well beyond his historical time. The analysis, after having focused on the painful editorial history of the fragment, identifies the crucial themes that this first literary experiment by Svevo recovers, rereading them in an original and personal key, from Ariosto’s great poem and from his so-called minor works.
A "rational" Homer: some aspects of poetic reform in Melchiorre Cesarotti's translation of the "Iliad"
This paper aims to highlight some translational and theoretical aspects of the monumental (and still little explored) work carried out by Melchiorre Cesarotti on Homer’s Iliad. Beyond his rewriting of La Morte di Ettore (1795), this work resulted in two editions of the poem (Penada 1786-1794 and Brandolese 1798-1802, both in ten volumes), which include a preliminary Ragionamento, an exceptional set of notes, and two different translations: one literal in prose and one unfaithful in verse, aimed at restoring the Iliad that Homer would have written if he had lived in the XVIIIth century. The article provides an overview of the main reformist tendencies that shaped this poetic version, with a focus on the interventions driven by rationalism. Specifically, it examines linguistic adjustments (such as the rejection of archaic stylistic features in the Homeric language), as well as poetic (the question of verisimilitude and the “mirabile”) and rhetorical considerations (particularly in the translation of similes).
The rediscovered voice: moments of the emergence of the self in the "Mondo creato". Some notes on the chiaroscuro grammar of Tasso’s hexameronic poem
For Tasso, the composition of the Mondo creato is not only a challenge in the field of sapiential poetry, but also determines the redefinition of the figure of the poet: against the tendentially defiladed posture adopted by the poet of the Liberata, the reader is now presented with a poet who is willing, on several occasions, to take the floor in order to provide indications on his own poetic actions. The silence, unusual for Tasso, in theoretical writings regarding the nature of this new poetry requires us to turn our gaze precisely to the places where the poet’s voice emerges in an attempt to define the coordinates of the poetry of the Mondo creato. The analysis of these places - now the proemes, now the similes, now the transitional sections - offers the portrait of a chiaroscuro grammar, the result of the presence of explicitly asserted norms, but constantly subject to the tension arising from their feared or concealed, but never a priori rejected, infringement.
Survival and Polysemy of an Image: the Deer Hunt in Epic-Chivalric Poems
This contribution aims to investigate the diverse uses of imagery within the epic-chivalric genre. Through close textual analysis, it is evident that the employment of zoological similes related to deer hunting can be categorized into two distinct areas. In the erotic sphere, this topos is often associated with female figures, embodying either the wounded lover or the fleeing beloved pursued by hounds. Conversely, in the military context, the symbol portrays a collective entity (one of the warring armies) as vulnerable prey, depicted as a doe fleeing from a lion (the enemy leader) who has slain its cubs. This study demonstrates not only the presence of recurring thematic and symbolic patterns within the genre but also the often problematic interplay between the two key elements of 16th-century epic-chivalric poems: arms and love.
In the foosteps of Rinaldo. For a history of the character in italian chivalric poems
The characters of the chivalric poems are part of an age-old tradition that has defined their characteristics so well that they have become fixed figures, bearers of common and universal values, virtues or faults. Rinaldo is the rebellious knight, a thief, always ready to alternate military and amorous edventures; Orlando is the miles Christi, chaste and devoted to the cause; Astolfo is the handsome knight and jester. However, when these long fictional lives are analysed from a diachronic perspective, it can be seen that the characters, while retaining a recognisable physiognomy, have changed, evolved, and their simplicity has gradually given way to complexity. Of the most famous characters in the tradition, Rinaldo is the one who best fits this analysis, because his adventures played a fundamental role in the development of Italian chivalric poems: from the second half of the fifteenth century and throughout the sixteenth century. In order to construct a history of the character, a literary corpus has therefore been sifted in order to identify which compositional features are maintained, which are modified and which are abandoned. The selection of chivalric texts includes the Cantari of Rinaldo da Monte Albano, the Morgante of Pulci, the Morte del Danese of Cassio da Narni, the Antheo gigante and the Triomphi of Carlo di Francesco dei Lodovici.
Heroic Paradigms in the So-Called "Ilias Latina"
The so-called Latin Iliad represents a very interesting case-study in terms of intertextuality. Scholars – who already analyzed its effective literary value, justifying it with the lack of experience of an author commonly considered a beginner –, found in the poem some significant elements in connection with the representation of main characters. This article aims to offer a general overview of the characterization of the four most famous heroes (Achilles, Telamonian Ajax, Hector and Ulysses), in order to show how each one – even in function of the typical homeric hierarchy – could provide relevant points because of the presence of many variations and of the coexistence between different mythological traditions. As a result, the study seems to point out an overall operation that – in spite of objective limits – should be evaluated in a positive manner: it reveals a strong literary awareness, especially in consideration of cultural context of the Neronian age.
Nina Paley (NP) is an American cartoonist, animator, and free culture activist from Central Illinois, United States. She was the artist and often the writer of the comic strips Nina’s Adventures and Fluff, after which she has worked primarily in animation. She is best known for creating the 2008 animated feature film Sita Sings the Blues, based on the Ramayana, with parallels to her personal life. In 2018, she completed her second animated feature, Seder-Masochism, a retelling of the Book of Exodus as patriarchy emerging from goddess worship. Barbara Pollak-Lewis (BPL) is a painter, curator and art educator from San Francisco, CA. She studied Animation at the Rhode Island School of Design. She has followed Nina’s cartoons since the late 1980s.
Copyright (c) 2024 AOQU (Achilles Orlando Quixote Ulysses). Journal on Epic
Gender cues in videogames with epic traits: from the hero archetype to the heroine’s journey
The aim of the paper is to examine the evolving legacy of epic in video games from a gender-sensitive perspective, identifying which elements of epic have been preserved and which have been transformed according to new identity-related patterns and perceptions. To this end, the essay undertakes a comparative analysis of some case studies. The selected videogames include God of War (2018), Horizon Zero Dawn (2017), and Hellblade. Senua’s Sacrifice (2017) and The Last of Us (2013). The analysis is based on the concept of the monomyth, as outlined by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), which describes common and recurring patterns that characterize the hero’s journey. Subsequently, the hero’s journey will be examined in God of War and The Last of Us, and then compared to the journeys of the two heroines in Horizon and Hellblade. Accordingly, the paper explores the construction of the character in accordance with the elements outlined by Campbell to trace the evolution of the hero or heroine in the video game industry through a gender-sensitive approach.
Women and traditional stories in second wave feminism
This article examines the reappropriation of traditional stories – myths, fairy tales, and epics – by second wave feminist artists, with a focus on Joan Jonas’s interdisciplinary work. Traditional stories have often been critiqued within feminism because of the way that they portray females and their fate in the plotlines. While there is immense variety within these genres, the stories are often perceived to be male-centric, where women are absent or only exist in service of the male protagonists’ stories. It is surprising then to find them as subject matter in the work of second wave feminists. Yet during this transformative period, marked by experimentation, activism, and self-actualization, feminist artists and writers drew heavily on these stories, exploring the tensions and possibilities they offered. Feminist artists, like Jonas, participated in the radical shift within the arts and the generation of new forms, specifically the proliferation of performance art. Influenced by poststructuralism, innovative interdisciplinary structures destabilized the meanings and illuminated the complexity and ambiguity of the stories. The diversity of approaches highlights the diversity of positions and sensibilities within second wave feminism and the many contradictions embedded in the movement, significantly influencing both contemporary art and contemporary society.
Feminine “Ta’zieh”: breaking the strict masculine wall by Iranian women in the Qajar Dynasty
During the Qajar dynasty (1779–1955), Ta’zieh – the epic performance of religious narratives – presented a historical opportunity for Iranian women to transcend patriarchal structures and expand their societal roles through engagement with religious myths. This article explores how Ta’zieh enabled the formation of a unique female identity, demonstrating how women utilized religious frameworks to challenge and overcome restrictions by participating in these epic performances. The focus is on key indicators that facilitated women’s entry into theater and the broader impact these efforts had on their lives.
The representation of female characters in Butler’s translation of the “Odyssey”: a corpus-based approach
In The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897), Samuel Butler developed a notably controversial intuition about the poem’s author. In his analyses, he concluded that the same person could not have created the Iliad and the Odyssey: whilst the former was undoubtedly written by the Greek male poet Homer, the latter should be regarded as a companion piece to the Iliad and was instead the work of a «young, headstrong, and unmarried» woman (as the title to his chapter VII phrases it) from Magna Graecia, more precisely Trapani, Sicily. This theory rested upon his assumption that female characters in the Odyssey are favourably portrayed, whereas there is a relative disregard for male characters (Ebbott 2005). Butler’s prose translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey became highly successful and are still consulted nowadays; however, his views on the authorship of Homer’s works were severely criticised back then. The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent Butler’s theory impacted his translation of the Odyssey by analysing his portrayal of female characters through collocations («word sketches»); to this end, an approach combining corpus linguistics (Fischer-Starcke 2010), corpus stylistics (Mahlberg 2012), and translational sty-listics (Boase-Beier 2006) will be adopted as the research design for this study. This study analyses the target text to understand how gender is represented and received (Venuti 2019) through linguistic choices.
A Reading for Her: Homer Read by Alma-Tadema, Between Iconographic Innovation, and Reception of Greek Culture in Victorian England
This contribution aims to analyze the painting A Reading from Homer by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1885, Philadelphia Museum of Art). It focuses on the iconographic innovation that reworks the 19th-century theme of the relationship between Homer and his audience in relation to the reception of Greek culture and the Homeric question in Victorian England from a gender perspective. The article reconstructs the events linked to the realization of the painting and its sources, focusing on the individual characters that make up the audience listening to the reading from Homer. In particular, it examines the role of the girl at the center of the painting. What female perspective on the epic and Homer was conceived in Victorian England, and what interpretation of that context does Alma-Tadema propose with his painting? Furthermore, the contribution addresses issues pertaining to the evolution of art and taste during the latter half of the nineteenth century. It examines the transformation of the history painting and its integra-tion with the genre painting, the theme of female reading and reading aloud, and the ambivalence evident in Alma-Tadema’s portrayal of the female universe and its representation.
The female dimension of Italian children’s mythology
Italian children’s mythology has a rather recent literary and editorial history: the first book of this type was published in 1911 and was Stories of Greece and the Barbarians by Laura Cantoni Orvieto. Books of myths for young readers have multiplied and have enjoyed a good success since then. It should be noted that this genre of storytelling for children had women as the main writers and protagonists of its creation and diffusion. In addition to the aforementioned Cantoni Orvieto – who is a very important figure in Italian children’s literature – it should be noted Luisa Banal, Mary Tibaldi Chiesa, Rosa Calzecchi Onesti and, nowadays, Beatrice Masini. These authors managed to enhance the female dimension of mythology, giving voice to the women, heroines and goddesses of ancestral tales who, for a long time, were placed on the margins of those ancient stories. Furthermore, even a very important children’s author like Gianni Rodari, through myths, was able to talk about the need for female emancipation.
Family nights: popular female audience and chivalric performance
We have very little evidence of female presence within the popular audience of epic-chivalric public performances: a statistical issue, related to the scarcity of surviving evidence, or a more significant indicator? The essay attempts to answer this question through a parallel between the reception of 15th-16th century chivalric narratives and 19th-20th century southern Italian popular performances (cantarinaldi, cunto, opera dei pupi). Even between such distant ages, there are a great many points of contact in the reception of chivalric narratives. They allow us to emphasize, on the one hand, the tendency to perceive the epic-chivalric spectacle as a “private” space for male audiences (in which they could indulge in sentiment and identification), and, on the other hand, the unconditional love that women developed for this narrative universe as soon as they had the chance to get to know it.
«Donne io vel dico da parte de Orlando ». Notes on women reading the chivalric poem in the 16th century
In the proem of canto eighteen of Hercole, Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio addresses the «donne gentili». The octaves that follow recount a «lascivo amore, e fiamme scelerate»; but the intent, the author warns, is not to tarnish the faith of the aforementioned, defined shortly afterwards as inviolable, but rather to define a vice not to be followed. The narrative is intended to serve as an exemplum and the proem is elected as a form of dialogue. Cinzio’s is not the only case within the sixteenth-century chivalric production in which the author, through allocutionary formulas, addresses his readers. In fact, he is accompanied by a series of texts that follow in the wake of the cantari, Boiardo, and Ludovico Ariosto’s Furioso: from Cassio da Narni’s La morte del Danese to Vincenzo Brusantini’s Angelica innamorata, up to the more famous Amadigi by Bernardo Tasso. Each of them establishes a dialogue with the female audience, whether noble or indefinite, no longer exclusively dedicated to working with «l’ago e ’l panno».
Beyond the wrapping of the story: Angelica escaping and Angelica on the way in the "Orlando furioso"
Traditionally interpreted as a fickle woman perpetually on the run, as a metaphor for the unattainability of desires and as a narrative cog that is deactivated once her function of triggering the madness of Orlando and the other knights has been exhausted, the figure of Angelica is also presented, in the Orlando furioso, as a character endowed from the outset with a specific desiring dimension. The essay therefore considers the dual status of Angelica, at once a woman-object exposed to the knights' concupiscence, gradually deprived of the possibility of moving, concealing her body and making autonomous decisions, and an individual who from the very beginning of the poem is, like the other characters, the holder of her own paradoxical inquiry: to leave the poem, and thus escape a narrative universe that condemns her to the role of prey and reward. The essay also examines the possible reception of this “double Angelica”, at once object and subject of desire, in the illustrations of the sixteenth-century editions of the poem.
Losing one’s head. The exemplary figures of Isabella and Bradamante and their audience
The essay addresses the aspect of the representation of the feminine in Orlando Furioso that concerns sexual conduct and chastity. At the centre of my work is the reading of a series of episodes belonging to adjacent groups of cantos: the specular and conjoined events of Angelica and Olimpia in Cantos VIII-XII and the story of Isabella in Canto XIII; Isabella’s death at the hands of Rodomonte in Canto XXIX, and Bradamante’s revenge on her in Canto XXXV. The figures of Isabella and Bradamante construct the image of warrior women who are self-sufficient in the pursuit of virtue. For the female audience, the two figures build the possibility of autonomous preservation of chastity, immune from slander and suspicion; for the men, their example reassures the certainty of lineage. In the background, we also glimpse pagan warriors, first and foremost Rovenza, who brings the knot of chastity and reproduction into her story.
«A vostro onor di questo libro è il fine». The representation of women as an active part of the audience in "Inamoramento de Orlando"
The narrator of the Inamoramento de Orlando often represents himself speaking to his audience, and the descriptions of the audience that we can extract from those representations change throughout the poema. This contribution shows how women get included in the audience pictured by the speaker starting from the second half of the second book: this innovation is related to an actual change in the social composition of the Ferrara’s court (notably with the arrival of Eleonora d’Aragona in 1473) and it affects the moral and political message of Boiardo’s work. A comparison with Ariosto’s Orlando furioso allows a better understanding of the uniqueness of the Inamoramento’s approach to female audience representation.
«And with oblivious ravishment once more hangs on his lips who tells». Virgil’s Dido as an epic heroine passionate about poems (and the suggestions of this model in the Dante’s Francesca bibliophile)
Virgil’s Dido is here reinterpreted in an unconventional key compared to the stereo-type of the mad love that has habitually enveloped her fame. She is discussed in the light of a rep-resentation so far little appreciated by critics: that of an avid fan of the classic epic. It is this mania for heroic myths that leads her to beg Aeneas to tell her about his adventurous life. The story of the veteran of the Trojan War is the spark that ignites the already latent erotic passion in her. As we try to demonstrate at the end of the essay, this archetype could be the basis of Dante’s construction of the figure of Francesca, counted among that group of strong readers of stories of heroes who transfer into real life what they have learned from the products of literary imagination.
«Imitando i prischi atleti». Ancient and Modern in the "Giuochi Olimpici" of Arcadia
Starting with Bilinski’s studies on the Giuochi olimpici in Arcadia, this essay aims to delve into the first editions of the competition, which are fundamental for understanding the construction of the Arcadian ideal of improving the past, set in the contemporary querelle des anciens et des modernes. Through the study of the manuscript material preserved in the Biblioteca Angelica, still largely unpublished, was reconstructed the first edition of the Giuochi celebrated in 1697, and then printed with significant variations within the Arcadia crescimbeniana (1708). Subsequently, through comparison with later printings, the points of continuity and change are emphasised, with the aim of highlighting how the competition constitutes a privileged point of view for the study of the relations of the assembly with the context of papal Rome.
Variae - Antiquity in the Mirror of Arcadia: Language, Poetry, Arts
«In versi latini all’improviso composti»: Preliminary notes for a history of Latin extemporaneous poetry in Arcadia
In outlining a profile of improvised poetry in Latin in Arcadia, with particular attention to the custodiati of Crescimbeni (1690-1728) and Morei (1743-1766), this essay proposes a detailed analysis of the documentation, in part already known in part unpublished, to focus the attention on some published improvised Latin texts, written by Arcadi Antonio de’ Felici, Antonio Somai, Antonio Re da Roma e Pietro Antonio Petrini. The essay provides the edition, translation and a comment of the sources. Lastly, considering the exceptional nature and importance of these witnesses - of which there are also other manuscripts, subject of ongoing research - the study wants to reflect on the ways of circulation and use of improvised poetry, even in the objective difficulty of framing the phenomenon.
On the Palatine. From the Kingdom of Evander to the Republic of Arcadia
The manuscript 16 of the Accademia dell’Arcadia contains both a Genealogia and a Albero Genealogico dei Re d'Arcadia. The sheets likely date from the early years of the Academy, when the Arcadians were writing a succinct history of Arcadia which retraced the stages through which the Coetus had structured itself as a Republic from its legendary origins, that is from when Evander had arrived on the Palatine Hill along with the ancient Arcadians. The reforms of the time and the creation of a Greek-inspired Ephemeris, as well as the memory of the cult of the indigenous deities, reflect the founders’ desire to give the assembly a prestigious mythical origin. Such a legacy soon manifested itself in the prose and poetry of the Academy, especially in those compositions that the Arcadians read at the Bosco Parrasio on the Palatine Hill, a place they arrived at, somewhat like Evander, after various wanderings and where they would promulgate the Leges in 1696.
The essay introduces the section dedicated to Antiquity in the Mirror of Arcadia: Language, Poetry, Arts
Ossian sixty years after Cesarotti. A translation of "Oinamora" by Giovanni Torti (1825)
Cesarotti’s translation of The Poems of Ossian famously introduced to Italy certain stylistic features, images and linguistic movements that would later be the seed of the new Romantic sensibility. In 1825, Giovanni Torti, a poet of Parini formation who later converted to Romanticism, published a translation of one of Ossian’s lesser-known epic poems: Oinamora. The basic text of the translation, however, was not Macpherson’s English text, as was the case for Cesarotti, but rather a later Latin translation from the English area (1807), published together with the text of what is supposed to be the Celtic original. The article intends to compare the two translations (Cesarotti 1772 - Torti 1825) to highlight the different metrical, stylistic and linguistic choices, and to reason about the different epic models of reference; in an attempt to provide a picture of the development of the new Italian poetic taste, observed sixty years after the unique literary phenomenon that was the publication of The Poems of Ossian translated by Melchiorre Cesarotti.
Based on or after the antique? André Chénier's "Hermes" and "America" or Epic at the risk of Philosophy
Generally seen as poet of the return to Antiquity that swept across Europe at the end of the 18th century, André Chénier was also the author of two “modern” epics in which he saw his major realisations, Hermès and L’Amérique. Under his pen, the epic becomes an exploration of knowledge, without being confused with didactic poetry. With a philosophical outlook inherited from the Enlightenment, these two works shift the boundaries of the genre, potentially redefining its content and codes. Potentially, since they have never been completed, proof of the contradictions in which they are caught and that perhaps made them difficult to achieve. Indeed, while the poet’s objective was resolutely modern, the reference to texts from Antiquity remained inescapable in his eyes, as generic models and sources of inspiration on which Moderns must lean on. But can ancient epic define the epos to which modernity aspires?
The «stupenda macchina volante»: Vincenzo Lancetti's "Areostiade" between modernity and the revival of antiquity
Montgolfier brothers’ first experiments with the hot-air balloons, which took place in 1783, through the last years of the fading ancien régime, did not fail to capture the public’s attention: artists and literates contributed to disseminate the fascination with the new invention through their prints, their technical observations on flight, and their literary works. In Italy, Vincenzo Monti celebrated the «floating ship» in his ode Al signor di Montgolfier. A member of the Accademia dei Trasformati, a pupil of Giuseppe Parini, a friend with Monti, Ugo Foscolo and Carlo Porta, Vincenzo Lancetti (1766-1851) was a lesser-known man of letters, who likewise devoted to the aerostatic ascension an entire poem, the Areostiade (1803). My talk aims to demonstrate the stylistic and thematic influence of the classical tradition on Lancetti’s poem, an example of the author’s ability to treat the theme of achievements of imagination and progress, by re-functionalizing mythical imagery and formal models.
On the methods and chronology of Monti's version of the "Iliad": the first known drafts in preparation for the "editio princeps"
The present article aims to historicize Vincenzo Monti's Homeric reception in the early nineteenth-century, through the study of the genetic variants of the autograph of the Pavia lesson bearing the drafts of poetic version of Book X of the Iliad. The comparison with the eighteenth-century models of Samuel Clarke and Melchiorre Cesarotti, also in relation to the parallel and complementary "neoclassical" instances of Ugo Foscolo, is intended to add new insights for the updated chronology of the entire Monti translation, in view of the editio princeps (Brescia, Nicolò Bettoni, 1810-1811).
Notes on the reuse of classical epic in the poetry of the late 18th century. Parini's "Giorno" and Savioli's "Amori"
This paper proposes a reflection on the revival of the classical epic in the poetry of the second half of the eighteenth century by providing an examination of the re-use of ancient motifs and images in Savioli’s Amori and Parini’s Giorno. In a century in which the epic genre was not very popular, there was indeed a remarkable recovery of classicism not only from a linguistic and syntactic point of view, but also from a thematic one, as testified, among other things, by the frequent revival of mythological images. Within this framework, the investigation tries to identify the forms of recovery and reuse of the classical epic tradition. These forms are often identifiable with the reinterpretation of scenes not only in an encomiastic key, which is the most common, but also in an ironic and satirical, or even metaphorical manner, sometimes to embellish scenes of pronounced eighteenth-century style.