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Renaissance And Reformation: From Private Morals To Public Policy In Alonso De Ercilla’S "La Araucana" And Edmund Spenser’S "The Faerie Oueene", Cyrus Moore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study examines the significance for Ercilla and Spenser of humanism, Neoplatonism, Petrarchism, and cortegiania, competing discourses with distinct identities within the competing ideologies of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Both authors draw on a shared heritage of the translatio studii and, in particular, on imagery arising from epic poetry's underlying tension between epos and eros. Ercilla's use of this material fuels a renovatio of classical epic based on the poet's participation in the events he describes. Spenser's utilization of these motifs constitutes a transformatio impelled by reformed religion, which raises the stakes from the potential for shame or …