'Salve, magna parens': Virgil’s 'laudes Italiae' in Renaissance Italy and beyond

This article traces three major strands in the reception of the address to Italy at the end of Virgil’s laudes Italiae in Book II of the Georgics. The first is the adoption of phrasing from these lines as the basis for expressions of devotion to the writer’s country (and for panegyric of contemporary rulers), or in inverted form to lament the present state of the author’s homeland; the second is the appropriation of Virgil’s hymnic apostrophe to his patria in poems on religious themes, where language from this passage is harnessed to invoke the supreme deity or the Virgin Mary, another magna parens; and the third is the use of Virgilian terminology to celebrate Virgil himself as the mighty parent of poetry and poets, whose words (including those of the lines under discussion) have inspired the literary endeavours of his successors across Europe and beyond throughout subsequent centuries.

La "barbarie glorieuse" pendant la Renaissance européenne

The thesis deals with the notion of "barbarian/barbarism" from Greek and Roman antiquity to the European Renaissance history and theatre. From a methodological point of view, though the notion of "barbarian" is analysed from an interdisciplinary perspective, the hermeneutic approach of the history of ideas and New Historicism are privileged. The main idea of the thesis is that during the XVIth century in Europe the interpretation of barbarism as a historical and cultural event has shifted from a negative position to a more positive one. The idea of “glorious barbarism” tries to explain such a change in European thought. The thesis is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter the notion of barbarism is analysed from Greek and Roman antiquity to the Renaissance. The second chapter deals with the development of cartography during the XVIth century in Europe and its relation to the redefinition of Europe’s borders. This chapter also deals with the study of some European political treatises developing a reflection on the barbaric past of Europe. The third chapter deals with the analysis of European XVIth century theatre and its relation to the representation of barbarism, with particular attention to Italian, English and Spanish plays staging a conflict between civilization and barbarism. Finally, the forth chapter deals with the analysis of the myth of Amazons during the XVIth century both in the arts and in literature. The Amazons are interpreted as the female translation of the figure of the barbarian. This cultural, artistic and political process emerges particularly in representation of female characters in European XVIth century theatre.