From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic

Abstract

From Many Gods One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic by Tobias Gregory. U. of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. 247. $30.00. The epic narrator of Paradise Lost sets out on an ambitious course of pursuing Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime (1.15-16), but most students of Milton know that the masterpiece is one in a line of attempts present religious or cultural history through the vehicle of the long poem. As a history of the genre, Tobias Gregory's From Many Gods One could justifiably find a place on the bookshelf of any student, scholar, or teacher of epics and romances, including Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, Petrarch's Africa, Vida's Christiad, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Paradise Lost. Gregory pursues his elegantly simple thesis throughout his 224-page argument in a manner that is both informative and economical. In imitating the poets of antiquity, Christian writers of the Renaissance were faced with an enormous literary problem. If the heart of the epic is a commensuration between mortals and divinity, how could they balance the theological requirement of representing an omniscient, omnipotent deity with the narrative requirement of actually telling a good story (41)? If the Christian God is always in some way present and uniquely capable of solving anything, what remains of the traditional contingencies that allow an author maintain a reader's attention? While Gregory's scope of reference extends the beginnings of Yahwist monotheism the contemporary Left Behind series, he shows a great sense of control in developing the trajectory of his text, which is organized around a problem-solution framework. His introduction and first chapter explain the narrative of polytheism not available Christian writers: the pagan gods did not have be all-knowing, all-powerful or even particularly good as the Christian God was assumed be (8). His remaining chapters present four distinguishable types of attempts over three centuries imitate this type of storytelling and still remain true the assumptions of monotheism. Even though most students of Renaissance poetry will be familiar with Homer and Vergil, Gregory loosens the requirements of the humanist canon in his first chapter, whose purpose, he explains is to enable nonclassicists read the Renaissance chapters with the polytheistic model firmly in mind (28). He begins with a brief account of the meeting of the gods in book 4 of the Iliad in which Zeus and Hera negotiate how end the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. In the two paragraphs that follow, Gregory explains the essence of the Olympian community: [They] form an extended family ... At the center of the family is Zeus ... Zeus commands not by metaphysical necessity but because he is the strongest of the gods.... Zeus cannot be overpowered, but he can be convinced, supplicated, lobbied, and even tricked ... in the face of opposition by Hera and Athena, Zeus turns out care less about preserving Troy than about preserving peace in heaven (33-34). There are two advantages the economy of Gregory's presentation of Zeus's contingent omnipotence here (41), which are characteristic of his book as a whole. For the classicist reading this book understand better Renaissance epics, Gregory keeps his introductions antiquity relatively short. Yet for the student coming at it the other end--searching the classical context for the keys Renaissance works--his succinct explanations stand be more illuminating than the standard pedagogical catalogue of epic conventions (beginning in medias res, the invocation of the muse, etc.). In his introduction Gregory explains the debates among Greek writers over whether the gods themselves were anthropomorphic fabrications of human virtues and the gradual evolution in the early Hebrew tradition from worshipping Yahweh as the greatest of gods worshipping Yahweh as the only god (13). …

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