Christopher Marlowe's Representation of Love

Area 10 – Scienze dell'antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche

This study suggests a solution to several crucial issues concerning Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander. Although it is unanimously agreed that the representation of love is original in the poem, the nature and degree of this originality have not been determined. Critics either argue that it lies in the overt celebration of sensual love, or in the implicit moral tone, thus inferring that the poem is incomplete because Marlowe could not provide a suitable conclusion to it. After analysing the most significant textual variants to the epyllion and the emblematic title–page of Linley’s edition, Pasquarella examines the interrelations between the poem and Edward II. He argues that the representation of love in these two works is deliberately ambivalent and the ambivalence is intrinsic in their structure. Thus, Marlowe significantly contributes to the process of change in the notion of love which characterises English literature from about 1590 to the first half of the seventeenth century. Vincenzo Pasquarella is a Research Doctor in Modern Foreign Literatures. He has published several essays on the history of textual transmission of Hero and Leander, and on Edward II. His research interests include textual bibliography (with special reference to English Renaissance), early modern English narrative poetry and drama, emblematics, as well as contemporary British and Canadian prose.

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