Furor Poeticus in the Renaissance and its Reception

This volume provides an analysis of the constitution of the idea of furor poeticus (poetic frenzy), the conception of the poet as an individual inspired and possessed by a kind of divine madness. This idea, deeply rooted in the Platonic tradition, was conceptualized in the Renaissance by Marsilio Ficino and his followers, who spread it throughout Europe in the sixteenth century. The first part of the book offers a comparative approach to the theory of furor poeticus in little-studied Italian humanists such as Francesco Zorzi and Alessandro Farra, who combined Neoplatonism with other popular currents of the time such as Orphism or the Christian Kabbalah. The second part of the volume aims to show that there is no abrupt break between Renaissance and Romantic poetics, as is sometimes claimed, and reveals new connections between different authors of these periods. 

This collection thus attempts to fill the gaps in the modern Platonic tradition by comparing different cultural spheres during the sixteenth-century Renaissance and then tracing its afterlife in modern literature and poetics through some representative case studies. For these reasons, the volume is aimed primarily at scholars and researchers interested in literary theory and the relationships between religious and poetic concepts in the modern period. The target audience will find in this volume a new approach to the theological and metaphysical foundations of one of the most influential poetological concepts of modern literary culture.

Ekaitz Ruiz de Vergara Olmos is a professor and researcher in the department of Classical Studies of the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). His research interests include ancient Greco-Latin literature and its reception in modern literature, especially in poetry and poetics. Ekaitz is the author of a dozen articles in academic journals and book chapters, mainly on the reception of ancient literature (especially Virgil) in medieval literature and poetics, especially in the Italian (Dante) and Spanish (Villena, Nebrija) traditions. He is also the editor of a collection of writings on contemporary Spanish philosophy of religion (2022) and is currently preparing another volume on the theory of literary genres (forthcoming). His training in philosophy and literary theory has led him to a particular interest in the study of modern interpretations and transformations of traditional poetological ideas, such as furor poeticus.