Framing the early modern epyllion in its literary, historical and social context

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Revived and nurtured in the urbane environment of the Inns of Court, mostly at the hands of a well-defined social milieu of university-educated young writers, the early modern epyllion is rich in intertextuality, characterised by an erotically charged and witty style, interested in courtship, desire, maturation of youths, and rhetoric and its persuasive power. Flourished in the midst of the fin de siècle feeling of the last decade of Elizabeth's reign, the epyllion existed within a very specific timeframe: the first epyllion is considered to be Thomas Lodge's Scillaes metamorphosis (1589); the last, Francis Beaumont's Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (1602). By studying a selection of epyllia in their cultural, literary, and social context, my doctoral dissertation intends to research the reasons why this particular sub-genre existed in such a well-defined historical moment, arguing that the humanistic education promoted by the reform of grammar schools and by the Inns of Court, the translations of Ovid's works inaugurated in the 1560s and completed in 1592 by Marlowe, a growing anxiety about syphilis and plague, Elizabeth herself and the sublimated eroticism of her court created the environment in which the epyllion could rise and prosper. Conversely, the Bishops' Ban of 1599, the rise of the satire, and the decline of Elizabeth brought this witty genre to an end by 1602, making the epyllion a sexually charged literary parenthesis that did not survive the Virgin Queen. As the text which has come to dominate discussion, Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593) will run throughout my study as a point of reference in most of the chapters; around this key text, I will consider a wide range of less familiar material that includes Lodge's Scillaes metamorphosis (1589); Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1593); Edwards' Narcissus (1595); John Weever's Faunus and Melliflora (1601); Francis Beaumont's Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (1602). After having defined the genre and the poems that are considered epyllia, my research shall proceed as follow. A first chapter will be dedicated to themes of contamination, pollution and venereal diseases in Scillaes metamorphosis and Shakespeare's epyllion. The second shall analyse Hero and Leander through the lenses of the Ovidian revival and sexuality, which will lead to the third chapter, focused on gender inversion and sexually dominating women in Venus and Adonis, Narcissus and Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. Venus and Adonis will then be analysed again in depth in the fourth section, in the context of Elizabethan education and the study of rhetoric. Finally, the fifth chapter shall take in consideration Faunus and Melliflora that, despite not being the last epyllion chronologically, is the one that kills off the genre by promoting the Bishops' Ban, condemning previous epyllia writers, and drifting away for the conventions of the epyllion by taking a more satirical and moralising approach. The lack of specific studies on the reasons that made the epyllion flourish and fade within the last fifteen years of Elizabeth's reign is the reason why I believe that more doctoral-length research is due, especially one that focuses on the specific cultural and historical frame of this genre.