Proclaiming a Classic by Daniel Javitch

Proclaiming a Classic by Daniel Javitch

Despite its immediate popularity and its acclaim as a modern equal of the ancient epics, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (published in its final version in 1532) was for learned readers a perplexing work: it mixed romance, epic, and lyric poetry, poked fun at its marvelous and outmoded chivalric matter, contained many interrupted narrative threads, and included base and lowborn characters. In exploring the literary debates involved in elevating the Furioso to the rank of a classic, Daniel Javitch maintains that this was the first work of modern poetry to provoke widespread critical controversy, and that the contestation played an inaugural role in the formation of the European poetic canon. The Furioso was seen by its early publishers to embody the formal, thematic, and functional characteristics of the highly esteemed epics of antiquity. Some critics, however, found in this poem new forms and functions that seemed better suited to modern times; still others denied the work any form of legitimacy. Showing how the Furioso became a locus upon which various and conflicting ideologies could be projected, Javitch argues that such a development offers the best indication of a poem's having achieved canonicity. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Javitch, Daniel: - Daniel Javitch is Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. He is the author of Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England, Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso, and is at work on a book tentatively entitled Thinking About Genre in the Sixteenth Century. He has been, since 1972, a director of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780691606019
ISBN 10	0691606013
Title	Proclaiming a Classic
Author	Daniel Javitch
Series	Princeton Legacy Library
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Princeton University Press
Year published	2014-07-14
Number of pages	216
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.