The Real Rule of Four

Book Description

Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason's The Rule of Four is already a bookselling phenomenon. The Ivy League super-achievers drew upon an authentic 1499 Renaissance text to create their thriller about two Princeton undergraduates who try to unravel the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (pronounced "HIP-ne-RO-to-MA-kia PO-li-FEE-li").

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphiliis an erotic, pagan epic, written in a private language peppered with words taken from Latin and Greek and decorated with Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was not translated into English for 500 years, until 1999, when Joscelyn Godwin finally achieved that near-impossible task.

In The Real Rule of Four, Professor Godwin carefully investigates each aspect of the history of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and its use in The Rule of Four, including:

What is the Hypnerotomachia?
Who wrote the Hypnerotomachia? (A central theme of The Rule of Four)
What does the Hypnerotomachia mean?
Places and people in The Rule of Four
Glossary of names and terms in The Rule of Four

Lavishly illustrated with reproductions of the many beautiful woodcuts in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a fold-out color map and photographs of the featured locations at Princeton University, The Real Rule of Four is an indispensable guide to the many fans of Caldwell and Thomason's best-selling novel.

Joscelyn Godwin was a scholar of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and holds a PhD from Cornell University. Since 1971 he has taught at Colgate University, where he is a professor of music. In 1999 Godwin published the first complete English translation of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, called "a masterpiece of clarity and scholarship" by Andrew Graham-Dixon in the London Daily Telegraph. Godwin's other books include Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, Music and the Occult, Arktos: The Polar Myth, The Theosophical Enlightenment and The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance.

Customer Reviews:

A Magnificent Guide.......2005-08-03

Any best-seller nowadays can be expected to generate a side industry of books, films, computer games, plastic toys and so on, trying to capitalize on the success of the original. It would be a great mistake, however, to dismiss Joscelyn Godwin's magnificent guide as just a spin-off from the success of the Rule of Four. For one thing, its author not only follows but also preceded the novel, because as author of the only modern English translation of Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili he provided the best source of knowledge of the inspiration for the Rule of Four available to people who don't read mediaeval Italian.

It would have been easy, and perhaps tempting, for a scholar of Godwin's knowledge and ability to be patronizing about the Rule of Four, concentrating on correcting its errors and misinterpretations and on displaying his own superior understanding of the Hypnerotomachia, but Godwin does not do that. On the contrary, his attitude to the novel is thoroughly generous and positive. He starts by assuring us that the Hypnerotomachia is a real book, not a fictional invention of Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, explains its importance in the history of typography and erotic literature, and describes what it is all about. He goes on to analyse the structure -- unusually complex for a popular novel -- of the Rule of Four, and to examine the evidence for the identity of the real author of the Hypnerotomachia. In this his conclusion is different from that reached in the Rule of Four, but he does not dismiss other possibilities as absurd. He describes the historical context in which the Hypnerotomachia was written, including the famous "bonfire of the vanities" of Savonarola. Finally he analyses what the Hypnerotomachia is really all about, and explains all the literary, historical and geographical name-dropping that occurs in the Rule of Four.

All in all, this is an indispensable guide, written by an outstanding expert, for anyone interested in reading the Rule of Four in more than the most superficial way.

Interesting Introduction to a Strange Work.......2005-05-02

Joscelyn Godwin has published a number of excellent books, the most important of which is probably his first ever English translation of the famous and mysterious Renaissance epic, the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili". This book, with its clouded origins and hidden meaning, forms the basis of the novel "The Rule of Four" which has managed to work itself onto bestseller lists on the coattails of "The Da Vinci Code", though its obscure esocteric subject is much less controversial. Here Godwin explores the origins and authorship of the "Hypnerotomachia" in detail for the layreader and provides much interesting insight into this most beautiful and strange book.

The "Hypnerotomachia" was published in Venice by the famous Renaissance humanist printer Aldus Manutius in 1499 and has intrigued and confounded readers and scholars alike for 500 years. Godwin first gives an overview of the book's plot and discusses the 172 beautiful woodcut engravings that have made the book so fascinating to five centuries of readers. The book is filled with long and painstakingly detailed descriptions of architecture, statues, parades, ruins, pagan rituals, and beautiful, ethereal, naked nymphs and goddesses. In fact, it is this rather blatant erotic element that has certainly helped to make the book so popular. This scandalous aspect of the book made it so popular in fact, that today it is almost impossible to find original copies with all of its engravings intact or without censorship. Godwin also discusses at length the controversy regarding the authorship of the tome, today largely accepted by scholars and historians as the Venetian monk Francesco Colonna. "The Rule of Four", Godwin points out, makes great use of fictional elements of the famous book, inventing codes and ciphers that are reputed to hide secret knowledge in its voluminous pages. Godwin emphasizes that despite these fictional inventions that help make "The Rule of Four" entertaining, the real Hypnerotomachia is just as interesting without them.

Godwin has written an engaging and accessible book on a difficult and bizarre work. He has helped to clear up many of the mysteries that have clouded the famous book and its author and given fans of "The Rule of Four" more detail and information on the events, places, and people found in that novel. This book is a must for anyone who enjoyed "The Rule of Four" and is looking to delve deeper into the strange world of Poliphilo and his dream quest for the elusive Polia.

Brilliant.......2005-01-04

Perhaps Professor Godwin ought to have written the novel himself! Certainly, by translating into English the entire text of the "Hypnoerotomachia Poliphilli", he was the condicio sine qua non for "The Rule of Four". I recommend this guide wholeheartedly, it is brilliant.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream

Average customer rating:

Tiresome, Slow - but Mind-Expanding?
Inspiration of the Rule of Four
Unread
Haven't read it, but...
Colonna for the fourth grade reader.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream
Francesco Colonna
Manufacturer: Thames & Hudson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Italian | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0500285497

Book Description

The book that inspired The Rule of Four—discover the secret codes of the best-selling novel!

One of the most famous books in the world, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, read by every Renaissance intellectual and referred to in studies of art and culture ever since, was first published in English by Thames & Hudson in 1999.

It is a strange, pagan, pedantic, erotic, allegorical, mythological romance relating in highly stylized Italian the quest of Poliphilo for his beloved Polia. The author (presumed to be Francesco Colonna, a friar of dubious reputation) was obsessed by architecture, landscape, and costume—it is not going too far to say sexually obsessed—and its 174 woodcuts are a primary source for Renaissance ideas on both buildings and gardens.

In 1592 an attempt was made to produce an English version but the translator gave up. The task has been triumphantly accomplished by Joscelyn Godwin, who succeeds in reproducing all its wayward charm and arcane learning in language accessible to the modern reader. 174 illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

Tiresome, Slow - but Mind-Expanding?.......2005-06-22

Imagine the most boring person in the world telling you about this "erotic" dream he had. As soon as he starts, you realize that to this guy "erotic" means "sensual" and he has a Medeival dread of his own sexuality. He spends hours meticulously describing every pebble, every stone, every crack in the architecture, every flower in the gardens, every thread of the costumes worn by the armies of lovely (but "virginal") nymphs he encounters along the way.
Out of the 466 pages of the hardcover 2nd edition, there is action on approximately 75 of them. The rest is lengthy and uninteresting description of the marvels Poliphilo sees in his dream. Everything is described in superlative terms, and the figure is repeated so often you can almost sing along with Poliphilo: "X such that was never seen/made/matched by Y." Where X is the thing described and Y is an obscure allusion to classical mythology or European lore of a person or place famous for its association with X or items like it. The classical allusions are so frequent and so obscure, the reader will need a guidebook probably twice as thick as the Hypnerotomachia itself in order to understand them all.
People prate of the beauty of this book, but ... I won't deny that the book itself, as a physical object, is quite beautiful, and the illustrations are interesting (however the women who are described in the text as "beautiful" are drawn sort of doughy with double chins and chubby baby-fat limbs.) But the average modern reader will not be able to slog through what must have been considered in the Renaissance to be an enchanting pageant of loveliness. The ceaseless barrage of adjectives and the narrator's simpering reluctance to ever take any sort of action will frustrate most members of a 21st-century audience.
This book is not without its merits, which are the reason I awarded it two stars. The first 150 pages are quite delightful, because things are actually happening in the story, the experience is still new, and the interminable tedium of the next 300 pages has not yet beaten the reader's brain into a catatonic state. The sumptuous banquet at the court of Queen Eleuterylida is a memorable highlight. There's an interesting scene right in the middle of the book, in which Poliphilo explores a ruined cemetery and reads epitaphs of unfortunate wights who died of love. Numerous descriptions of pagan rituals are interesting, if not accurate. The book is completely saturated with Greco-Roman paganism, which was a fad at the time it was written.
The act of reading the Hypnerotomachia can be rewarding in spite of, or perhaps because of its tedium. I forged onward with the grim determination that I would finish this book, no matter what ... my eyes rolled in my head as I fought off sleep, hypnotic streams of uninteresting adjectives reducing my awareness to a dreamlike state. I would read pages and afterwards have no memory whatsoever of what they had contained. Strange ideas and mental pictures emerged which seemed to come, not from the book, but from somewhere behind it. I found myself titllated by vivid erotic fantasies which seemed totally unrelated to what I was reading. Was this some sort of magic, intentionally worked by the author of the Hypnerotomachia, or was it my subconscious mind desperately trying to entertain itself in the face of such monumental dullness?
I recommend this book for anyone interested in a non-chemical psychedelic experience. But try to find it at the library, don't spend your hard-earned money.

Inspiration of the Rule of Four.......2005-06-19

The great success of The Rule of Four (Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason) made Francesco Colonna's book known to large numbers of readers who would not have heard of it otherwise; however famous the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili might have been to historians of renaissance literature it was hardly an everyday name to everyone else. It was inevitable, therefore, that any publisher with an English translation in its lists was going to bring out a popular edition for the potential new market.

And so it has proved. Thames & Hudson had produced a high-quality English edition as recently as 1999, and now offer a paperback edition at a much lower price, retaining the same high quality of paper and printing, but with a different page size. The book is set in Monotype Poliphilus, in principle the same typeface that was used by Aldus Manutius five centuries earlier for the original book. In principle only, however, as comparison with the facsimile from the original that is reproduced near the end of the book will show that the modern typeface is much less black in appearance - cleaner and lighter if you like the modern tendency, or paler and weaker if you don't. All of the original illustrations are included (including one that was accidentally omitted from the 1999 edition).

Joscelyn Godwin, the translator, decided to aim for clarity rather than a close representation of Colonna's style in English. For some readers this will be a disappointment, resulting in a pale shadow of the original, but if they want to understand what the book is about then it was probably inevitable. In the Introduction, Godwin gives a sample of what his translation might have looked like if he had tried to reproduce Colonna's style: "In this horrid and cuspidinous littoral and most miserable site of the algent and fetorific lake stood saevious Tisiphone, efferal and cruel with her viperine capillament, her meschine and miserable soul, implacably furibund". If that is the kind of thing you like to read you will certainly regard Godwin's version as a travesty, but if you want to get through the book you will probably prefer the text that he actually provides: "On this horrid and sharp-stoned shore, in this miserable region of the icy and foetid lake, stood fell Tisiphone, wild and cruel with her vipered locks and implacably angry..."

Unread.......2004-07-31

I havent read this book as of yet, but I am replying to a reader who was wonering how the pronounce the title. Taken from www.ruleoffour.com: "Since its publication in 1499, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (pronounced Hip-ner-AH-toe-mak-ee-a Poh-LI-fi-ly) has baffled scholars who have tried to unveil its many mysteries."

Haven't read it, but..........2004-07-28

Perhaps someone should tie this in with The Rule of Four?! After reading that I determined that reading the real book from the 15th century would not be up my alley. I do highly recommend The Rule of Four...it was a good read. If only someone would give a phonetic pronunciation of this Hypner....whatever. It's the premise for a best-seller & I've no idea how to pronounce it!

Colonna for the fourth grade reader........2002-09-03

An earlier reviewer remarked "Fortunately Joscelyn Godwin didn't try to reproduce Francesco Colonna's difficult and idiosyncratic Italian in English, otherwise the book would have been as difficult to read as 'Ulysses' and needed another volume just for footnotes." The correct word is unfortunately. The present translation is a lifeless, dumbed down document. I wasted my money.

Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance

Average customer rating:

Flimsy. . . otherwise, sturdy
Beautiful!!
Alberti wrote the Hypnerotomachia??

Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance
Liane Lefaivre
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

Reference | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0262621959

Book Description

The enigmatic, polyglot Hypnerotomachia Poliphili -- the inspiration for the bestselling novel The Rule of Four -- has fascinated architects and historians since its publication in 1499. Part fictional narrative and part scholarly treatise, richly illustrated with wood engravings, the book is an extreme case of erotic furor, aimed at everything -- especially architecture -- that the protagonist, Poliphilo, encounters in his quest for his beloved, Polia. Among the instances of the book's manifesto-like character is Polia's tirade defending the right of women to express their own sexuality, probably the first sustained argument of this type, which lifts the book's erotic theme from the realm of ribaldry to the more daring one of sexual politics. Liane Lefaivre offers the closest critical-theoretical reading of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili to date, placing it within both the historical context of the quattrocento and the rethinking of the metaphor of the architectural body.

Lefaivre is the first to attribute this strange, dreamlike book definitively to none other than the arch-rationalist Leon Battista Alberti. Intended as his final text, she argues, the book is the legacy of a humanist passionate about his life's work, a treatise on the role of dreamwork in design by one of the most creative minds of the Renaissance, and a manifesto in defense of humanism by a man who had been dismissed by an anti-humanist pope after a thirty-year career in the papal service.

Customer Reviews:

Flimsy. . . otherwise, sturdy.......2005-08-03

I came across this book and was instantly seduced by the illustrations. Then, of course, I started reading random passages trying to get a glimpse of the quality of the writing, insights and views of the author and was impressed. It is a well-researched material. Clear. Engaging. Substantial.

But I have to give it 4 stars because of the lame cover. It is so thin and soft I keep mangling the pages whenever I try to prop it up on my desk. But that is a very petty thing. The book is a delight to read. Forget about the trashy Rule Of Four book. I came across this book not knowing Rule of Four existed.

Beautiful!!.......2004-03-30

Lefaivre has not written modestly. Good for her! In making the claims she does, she needs a very powerful rhetoric that can persuade and dissuade simultaneously. Her concentration on the erotic dimension of the Hypnerotomachia is persuasive as is her description of the proto-feminist voice of Polia. This is the best introduction to the text available even if some will not be won over by the argument for the geneology of the text. Kudos to Lefaivre!!!

Some of the illustrations were not worth including in the book (30 h and j) because they are so very dark they just look like gray boxes. For a book so persuading of the beauty and erotic, it hardly seems fair to have placed such illustrations here. Perhaps it just adds to the plaisir du texte, not knowing what is behind the smudge. Maybe it is Polia or Poliphili, maybe even Alberti, in the buff. It certainly calls for the reader to suspend disbelief. Otherwise the physical look of the book is fine quality.

Alberti wrote the Hypnerotomachia??.......2000-11-22

Lefaivre aims to demonstrate that one of the most fascinating works of the Italian Renaissance, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was the work of one of that era's most intriguing personalities, the architect and writer Leon Battista Alberti. She bases her claim on the volume and quality of architectural discussion and comment in the Hypnerotomachia, which she argues could only have been written by a learned architect with a flair for literature. Moreover, she shows that several coinages of Alberti's, rarely if ever found in works other than his, are incorporated into the text. Lefaivre states her case with verve and conviction, but there are just too few known facts to make it water-tight. Besides, there are arguments at least as strong, if not stronger, in support of other candidates for the work's authorship. Most authorities, such as the editors of a recent Italian edition of the Hypnerotomachia remain of the opinion that the book was the work of Francesco Colonna, a wayward Dominican monk of Venetian origin. Nevertheless, Lefaivre animates her subjects and writes of them with intelligence and passion: that her central thesis is likely wrong does not detract from her book's charm. The MIT Press have done her proud, the book being beautifully designed, laid out, illustrated and printed. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Aldus and His Dream Book: An Illustrated Essay

Average customer rating:

caveat emptor- latet anguis in herba

Aldus and His Dream Book: An Illustrated Essay
Helen Barolini
Manufacturer: Italica Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Publishing & Books | Reference | Subjects | Books

Journalism | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0934977224

Book Description

Aldus and His Dream Book is a tribute to the life and work of the pioneering scholar-publisher, Aldus Manutius (1449/50-1515).

Helen Barolini's text discusses Aldus, his education, his publishing vision, his typographic innovations, and his famous Venetian press. At the same time, this book reproduces all the illustrations, and many of the full pages, from the Aldine press edition of Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which many consider the most beautiful book printed in the Renaissance. It also includes a bibliography of works on Aldus and the Hypnerotomachia.

Second printing. Illustrated, introduction, notes, bibliography, index.

Customer Reviews:

caveat emptor- latet anguis in herba.......2002-01-15

This IS a delightful companion to Joscelyn Godwin's translation of the Hypnerotomachia- handsomely and thoughtfully designed, and lovingly and carefully researched. Ms Barolini's style is simple, direct, and graceful. The snake in the grass is the binding. Contrary to what other reviews may lead you to understand, the binding is NOT Smyth-sewn; it is glued. This is an unfortunate compromise for a book that celebrates the craft of the book...

Average customer rating:

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Francesco Colonna , and Ian White
Manufacturer: Octavo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

Renaissance | Schools, Periods & Styles | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Antiquarian & Rare Books | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream

ASIN: 1591100593

Book Description

The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The strife of love in a dream) is generally considered to be the finest illustrated book of the Renaissance. Its splendid woodcuts can stand on their own, the printing (by Aldus Manutius) is remarkably handsome, and the text—a unique compound of Italian and Latin—remains open to fascinating interpretations, both worldly and esoteric. The author is thought to be Francesco Colonna, a Dominican monk whose name appears in an acrostic formed by the initial letters of each section. The Hypnerotomachia achieved fame as the quintessential illustrated book, having perhaps the longest continuous history of bibliophilic reverence of any printed work. This Octavo Edition features detailed images of the entire book, an essay on its architecture, and complete bibliographical details. Commentary by Nicolas Barker.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Discovering Antiquity Through The Dreams Of Poliphilus

Average customer rating:

an important step in the scholarship

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Discovering Antiquity Through The Dreams Of Poliphilus
Esteban Alejandro Cruz
Manufacturer: Trafford Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1412053242

Book Description

Five hundred years ago, an operatic tale of unrequited love and female erotica, launched a more available and sustaining passion in Renaissance architecture. What has remained inaccessible, however, is a complete understanding of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the text and haunting woodcuts that fascinated European civilization upon its publication in Venice in 1499, inspiring artists, architects, and patrons ever since. The importance of the image has always been a fundamental aspect of iconographic, human communication, and it is the vivid imagery described by the dreamer in search of his lost love and the introduction of more than 160 beautifully, haunting illustrations that has made Hypnerotomachia Poliphili as fascinating today as it was in the late fifteenth century when the Press of Aldus Manutius first published this graphically exquisite book.

The story of Poliphilus, whose lust for the indifferent Polia is rivaled only by the carnal pleasures he encounters in the incredible architecture, gardens, and landscapes of his sleeping imaginations, has inspired centuries of architects to create similar sensuality in the real-life buildings and gardens they designed. The cryptic messages, fantastic architecture, innovative graphic designs and layouts of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili have moved and stirred western culture, prompting translators then and now to seek richer understanding of the author's (or authors') intent. It remains uncertain who wrote the book, but the writer — singular or plural — seemed to want to produce a very spatial and graphic architectural treatise. This text was too visionary for its time, and it was published during a crucial turning point in history. The late 1400s in Rome were not very safe for the intellectually and scientifically curious. Renaissance academies that once flourished under the court of Nicholas V became underground collegiate societies dispersed under the following rule of the Borgia Papacy. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was itself discreetly published in Venice, which at that time was an attractive city for its innovative interests and developments, far away from the Papal States. Although I am not attempting to argue as to who wrote the original manuscript, one couldn't help as to suggest that it was a group effort, an innovative way of working together that truly expresses the renaissance and humanist spirit of its time.

Since the Hypnerotomachia came about within this context, the visions and wonders described in the original Aldine manuscript are presented in an overwhelming play of philological and archeological allegories. In order to have a better understanding of what this visionary incunabulum contains, I am, with my project, proposing to use graphical and architectural forms of critical analysis instead of literary studies traditionally associated with scholarly work in the past (whose works I mention in the first chapter "methods"). For this reason, I am proposing: Formas Imaginisque Poliphili, which means "imaginary models of Poliphilus" revealed.

MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF HYPNEROTOMACHIA POLIPHILI

By utilizing the technology of today with the history and traditions of the past, I hoped to develop a first series of digital, artist reconstructions of the architecture and landscapes described in this enigmatic book of the early renaissance. Since I was dealing with building and environmental design, the passages were quite familiar to those of a basic design background: research, vignettes, scale-measurement-proportion, practical simulations, etc., while at the same time, employing experience and methods developed during my previous work with re-constructing historic Bologna. In addition to this, literary resources such as the works of Leon Battista Alberti, as well as the works of contemporary experts, were reconsidered in order to arrive at a critical and regional development of architectural vocabulary needed to realize these artist reconstructions. In the end, my artwork of Poliphilus' architecture and insight into its significance within the Antiquarian context are presented here as an attempt to share an added deciphering of this labyrinthine text, bringing to life and giving significance to its fantastic architecture and allegorical visions. With this in mind, I invite you now to witness the visions of a 500 year old dream of sublime beauty, ferocity, liberty, grace, and most important: Love.

E.A.C. Milan, 2006

Customer Reviews:

an important step in the scholarship.......2007-09-17

I've just purchased this book and have some first thoughts.
I think it's pointless to understand the Hypnerotomachia Polipholi without first delving into Frances Yates book, The Art of Memory. Ms. Yates' masterpiece gives an intellectual context for the magic book, which I think is deeply connected to the Art of Memory. Perhaps The Hypnerotomachia is the ultimate "fantasia" of memory, As Ms. Yates refers to it, the state of the art, before being swallowed up, made irrelevant by the printing press.
That said, I think it remains for scholars of this book to attend to the intense VISUALIZATION of the places described in the Hypnerotomachia, rather than add more useless layers of words. This is Mr. Esteban's most valuable insight, his first academic motive, and as such it represents a very healthy and helpful avenue of research into the significance of the Hypnerotomachia Polipholi, and he has done much meticulous work to give precise visual imagery to the tortured narrations. Working from these images,I would suggest the next logical step would be to link them to heraldic imagery in general, and Francesco Collonna's working knowledge of memory systems in particular. If the images could start to be informed by the narrative in relation to these symbols, perhaps another layer of the Hypnerotomachia could be then revealed.

The dream of Poliphilo, (The Bollingen series)

Average customer rating:

The dream of Poliphilo, (The Bollingen series)
Linda Fierz-David
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

The Dream of Poliphilo: The Soul in Love (Jungian Classics Series)

Average customer rating:

absorbing Jungian interpretation of Renaissance classic

The Dream of Poliphilo: The Soul in Love (Jungian Classics Series)
Linda Fierz-David , and Mary Hottinger
Manufacturer: Spring Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

German | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

absorbing Jungian interpretation of Renaissance classic.......2000-02-29

This is an entertaining and fascinating Jungian interpretation of a mysterious Renaissance fantasy, the "Hyperotomachia Poliphilii", by Jungian analyst Linda Fierz-David. The essay has been mostly well translated into English (with an occasional awkward construction) by Mary Hottinger.

The Hyperotomachia is the lengthy and rather bizarre dream-narrative of 'Polipholio's search for union with his beloved, the maiden Polia. Similar to the late medieval narrative "The Romance of the Rose" (but far longer) the Hypnerotomachia is understood to be a mystical allegory and has been interpreted and reinterpreted since its 16th century publication. A complete English translation by Jocelyn Godwin has recently been issued and is available elsewhere at Amazon.com.

Fierz-David interprets the story as a combination of psychology and alchemy. The narrator is presented as searching for his 'anima', Jung's much-celebrated idea of the feminine shadow of the male psyche, and progresses through a series of revelations and initiations in order to do so.

The actual Hyperotomachia is very long and composed largely of detailed architectural fantasies. Fierz-David effectively abridges and glosses this mass. Regardless of your view of Jungian psychology this is a valuable overview of an otherwise not easily-accessible Renaissance classic.

Average customer rating:
The dream of Poliphilus: Fac-similes of one hundred and sixty-eight woodcuts in "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili",
Francesco Colonna
Manufacturer: Reproduced for the Department of science and art in photo-lithography by W. Griggs
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00086NSM8

Average customer rating:
Francesco Colonna;: A fanciful tale of the writing of the Hypnerotomachia,
Charles Nodier
Manufacturer: Privately printed
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | Audiobooks | Authors, A-Z | Books & Reading | British | Classics | Drama | Erotica | Essays | Foreign Language Fiction | General | Genre Fiction | History & Criticism | Large Print | Letters & Correspondence | Poetry | Short Stories | United States | Women's Fiction | World Literature
ASIN: B00085H6AY

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books