The Choice of Odysseus

Sarah Van der Laan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. She received her PhD in Renaissance Studies and English from Yale University and worked as a maître-assistante suppléante in the Département de langue et littérature anglaises of the Université de Genève before moving to Bloomington. Her teaching and research focus on the European epic tradition from Homer to Milton and on Renaissance literature, music, and culture, with special interests in the ethical value of literature, Renaissance epic and romance, Homeric reception, the intersections of epic and opera, and the place of music in the literary tradition.

• Introduction 1: Speaking with Homer: Authorizing Conversations and Dream Visions in Petrarch and Poliziano 2: Ariosto's Fractured Odysseys: Allusive Interlace and the Limits of Exemplarity in the Orlando furioso 3: From Public Duty to Private Pleasures: Odyssean Eros and Heroism in Gerusalemme Liberata 4: Spenser's Legends of S?phrosun?: Temperance, Chastity, and Odyssean Eros in The Faerie Queene 5: The Choice of Penelope: Exemplary Women and Exemplary Marriage in Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria 6: Milton's Odyssean Ethics: Arminian Theology and Homeric Heroism in Paradise Lost 7: Falling into Epic: The Choice of Odysseus and the Road to Redemption in Paradise Lost

Van der Laan's study provides an appealing new perspective on Renaissance epic and shows the enduring value of a comparative approach to the genre.