RQX_73_4_BookReviews 1455..1456


time repeatedly postponed them, was particularly popular in the belated nation of Italy
is therefore not really convincing. One would also have liked the book to have a sum-
marizing chapter in which the complex argumentation would once again have been
carefully presented; the short “Nachwort” cannot do this. Notwithstanding these objec-
tions, Italien im Heiligen Land is an intelligent book, suitable not only for students of
Renaissance literature but also historians of the late Middle Ages and the early modern
period.

Thomas Frank, Università di Pavia
doi:10.1017/rqx.2020.298

The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic: Images of Hostility from Dante to Tasso.
Andrea Moudarres.
The Early Modern Exchange. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2019. xii +
250 pp. $35.

In this era of ever-narrower academic specialization, fewer young scholars of Italian are
daring to take on wide-ranging research topics that involve more than one or two
major works. The chief obstacle relates to the amount of bibliographic mastery required,
for example, to be a Dante scholar or an expert in Ariosto. Either of those tasks can prove
extremely daunting. Therefore, when it comes to researching the rich Italian medieval and
Renaissance epic tradition, it is rare to encounter a graduate student, at least in the United
States, who is desirous to follow in the footsteps of such legends of scholarship as Robert
Durling and Barlett Giammati or, more recently, David Quint and Jo Ann Cavallo.

Enter Andrea Moudarres, winner of the 2018 Modern Language Association Aldo
and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies.
Mentored by Piero Boitani at Rome’s “La Sapienza” and by Giuseppe Mazzotta at
Yale, Mourdarres took on the task of writing authoritatively not only about four emi-
nent Italian epic poets (Dante, Pulci, Ariosto, and Tasso) but also about the influence of
Homer, Lucan, and Virgil on the Italian epic tradition as it relates to images of hostility.
Begun as a doctoral dissertation, The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic has evolved into
an introduction, four well-researched and well-argued chapters, and an epilogue. The
endnotes comprise over fifty pages and contain a plethora of valuable information; a
lengthy bibliography of primary and secondary sources and a helpful index close out
the handsomely printed monograph.

The introduction sets forth the book’s central argument, which is based on a form of
cosmopolitanism: “all forms of hostility—even those conventionally considered exter-
nal, such as the conflicts between Christian and Islamic forces in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance—[are] predominantly internal” (2). In taking this position, Moudarres is
arguing against Carl Schmitt’s long-accepted theory, adduced in the 1930s, that “the

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political enemy is ‘the other, the stranger’” (3). Chapter 1, “Between Fathers and Sons:
Sowers of Enmity in Inferno 28,” illustrates Moudarres’s view by the way he interprets
Dante’s depiction in the Inferno’s ninth bolgia of the sowers of discord. Muhammad, for
example, is seen as an apostate Christian, a religious schismatic who broke with the
Catholic Church by rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity, “the central source of doctrinal
dissent between Islam and Christianity throughout the Middle Ages” (17). Likewise,
other schismatics, such as Pier da Medicina, Curio, and Mosca de’ Lamberti, also illus-
trate internal dissent because they “exemplify the dangers of enmity within kingdoms or
cities” (18).

In chapter 2, “The Enemy within the Walls: Treachery, Pride, and Civil Strife in
Pulci’s Morgante,” Moudarres records that Pulci’s epic tells of “340 traitors and betray-
als” (44), and that the poem “exposes the primary vulnerability that lies within every
community: the internal rivalries that may eventually consume its political body”
(45). The author draws a convincing parallel between the giant Morgante and the
Greek hero Hercules, noting that both “are killed through treacherous acts of ven-
geance” (54). The third chapter, “The Enemy as the Self: Madness and Tyranny in
Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso,” argues that Orlando’s madness results from a bad case “of
psychomachia, or battle within the soul” (75). Mourdarres also explores more intriguing
interpretations, such as the possibility that the paladin’s madness is meant to suggest
lycanthropy and that the parallels between Orlando and Hercules are not only in “rela-
tion to Seneca’s tragedy Hercules Furens . . . but also in relation to Virgil’s Aeneid ” (77),
where the theme of furor seems to be a “constant presence” (93).

The final chapter, “The Geography of the Enemy: Christian and Islamic Empires from
the Fall of Constantinople to Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata,” struck this reviewer as being
the most provocative and speculative. The author posits that in relation to “Erminia’s and
Armida’s alleged conversions . . . neither character actually embraces Christianity,” and
that Tasso’s poem as a whole “does not unequivocally sustain a universalist ideology of
Catholic imperialism” (108). Whether or not one agrees with such conclusions, an open-
minded reader will find much to ponder in highly nuanced and close readings of the
Ferrarese poet’s epic, not to mention the other three Italian epics under discussion.

Madison U. Sowell, Brigham Young University, emeritus
doi:10.1017/rqx.2020.299

Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds: A Cognitive and Historical
Analysis. Steven Wagschal.
Toronto Iberic 36. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. x + 348 pp. $75.

A specialist in literature, Wagschal explores how Spanish authors’ expectations, associ-
ations, and modes of interaction with fauna shaped contemporary beliefs about animal

RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY1456 VOLUME LXXIII, NO. 4

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