The Trials of Orpheus: Poetry, Science, and the Early Modern Sublime

by Jenny C. Mann

Overview

A revealing look at how the Orpheus myth helped Renaissance writers and thinkers understand the force of eloquence

In ancient Greek mythology, the lyrical songs of Orpheus charmed the gods, and compelled animals, rocks, and trees to obey his commands. This mythic power inspired Renaissance philosophers and poets as they attempted to discover the hidden powers of verbal eloquence. They wanted to know: How do words produce action? In The Trials of Orpheus, Jenny Mann examines the key role the Orpheus story played in helping early modern writers and thinkers understand the mechanisms of rhetorical force. Mann demonstrates that the forms and figures of ancient poetry indelibly shaped the principles of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientific knowledge.

Mann explores how Ovid’s version of the Orpheus myth gave English poets and natural philosophers the lexicon with which to explain language’s ability to move individuals without physical contact. These writers and thinkers came to see eloquence as an aesthetic force capable of binding, drawing, softening, and scattering audiences. Bringing together a range of examples from drama, poetry, and philosophy by Bacon, Lodge, Marlowe, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and others, Mann demonstrates that the fascination with Orpheus produced some of the most canonical literature of the age.

Delving into the impact of ancient Greek thought and poetry in the early modern era, The Trials of Orpheus sheds light on how the powers of rhetoric became a focus of English thought and literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691219240
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	01/28/2025
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jenny C. Mann is an associate professor in the Department of English and the Gallatin School at New York University. She is the author of Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Vernacular Eloquence in Shakespeare’s England. Twitter @jenny_c_mann

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xiii

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction Trying 1

Chapter 1 Meandering: Ovid, Virgil, Longinus, Shakespeare, Sappho 33

Chapter 2 Binding: Plato, Montaigne, Lucian, Bacon, Virgil, Ovid 69

Chapter 3 Drawing: Beaumont, Ovid, Lodge, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Chapman, Petowe 99

Chapter 4 Softening: Ovid, Marlowe, Shakespeare 128

Chapter 5 Scattering: Ovid, Shakespeare 157

Conclusion Testing: Ovid, Bacon, Montaigne 190

Notes 203

Bibliography 239

Index 255

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"With a palpable love of rhetoric and poetics, extensive learning, and meticulous scholarship, Jenny Mann revivifies a well-known myth in ways that will surprise and inspire scholars of early modern literature. She places the figure of Orpheus at the center of innovative approaches to literary transmission, authorship, and the literary history of the sublime. I read this book with keen interest and admiration."—Lynn Enterline, Vanderbilt University

"Eloquent and polished, The Trials of Orpheus is a stylistically sophisticated work of criticism. Underscoring how allusions to the Orpheus myth express an early modern understanding of energeia as a physical force—able to shape, transform, weaken, and overpower the poet and audience—this admirable book makes a significant contribution to the current fields of scholarship on Ovid, reception theory, gender, and humanism."—Mary Floyd-Wilson, University of North Carolina

“An evergreen topic in Renaissance literary studies, the Orpheus myth has found its best interpreter in Jenny Mann. I enjoyed every page of The Trials of Orpheus, and will be thinking about its argument for a long time.”—Roland Greene, Stanford University

Editorial Reviews

"[A] fascinating and erudite book. . . . The Trials of Orpheus will be indispensable for decades to come to early modernists and those in other fields who seek to understand the complexities of classical reception and the uncanniness of poetic creativity from antiquity to the present."—-Benjamin Parris, Modern Philology

From the Publisher