The Allegory of Love in the Early Renaissance: Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Its European Context

It critically engages with the narrative of the Hypnerotomachia and with Poliphilo as a character within this narrative, placing it within its European literary context. Using narratological analysis, it examines the journey of Poliphilo and the series of symbolic, allegorical, and metaphorical experiences narrated by him

James Calum O’Neill is a literary and art historian specialising in Italian medieval and Renaissance literature, fine art and architecture. His PhD was conducted at Durham University on ’Self-Transformation in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili’ which is now published by Routledge under the title The Allegory of Love in the Early Renaissance: Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and its European Context. Currently, O’Neill’s research focuses on botanical, architectural, antiquarian and narratological analysis in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili as a locus for the convergence of philosophic, elegiac, antiquarian and medical traditions, pertaining to both medieval and humanist cultures, with a focus on northern Italian and Venetian society during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.