Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature

Julia Reinhard Lupton

Published by Stanford University Press 1996

Afterlives of the Saints

Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature

Julia Reinhard Lupton

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503616066

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book examines the ways in which the literary genre of hagiography and the hermeneutical paradigm of Biblical typology together entered into the construction of “the Renaissance” as a canon and period. It is not about saints’ lives in themselves, as either literary or historical phenomena, but instead addresses the structural effects of hagiography in the secular literature of the Renaissance. The central texts analyzed—Boccaccio’s Decameron, Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale—all manifest key moments and aspects in the creation of a Renaissance canon for the post-Renaissance world. The epochal significance of these works, saturated in religious allusions as well as scenes of profane life and classical art, is shown to rest in neither the normative piety nor the subversive heresy of any of these writers, but rather in their crafting of myths of modernity precisely out of the religious material that formed such an important part of their daily vocabularies.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
A Note on Texts Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
PART I: TYPOLOGY AND HAGIOGRAPHY
1. Typologies of the Renaissance: Burckhardt, Warburg, and Benjamin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. The Denouement of Martyrdom: The Symptom in Psychoanalysis and Hagiography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	40
PART II: THE NOVELLA AND ITS RENEWALS
3. The Gleaner's Prologue: Chaucer's Legend of Ruth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
4. New Wine in Old Skins: The Decameron and Secular Literature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
5. Saints on Trial: The Genre of Measure for Measure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
PART III: ICONOGRAPHIES OF SECULAR LITERATURE
6. Typological Designs: Creation, Iconoclasm, and Nature in Vasari's Lives of the Artists Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
7. 'The Winter's Tale' and the Gods: Iconographies of Idolatry Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263

Language: English
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 304
Illustrations
- Other: illus

eBook

Published: January 21, 2022
ISBN: 9781503616066