Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Encyclopedia
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (from Greek hypnos, ‘sleep’, eros, ‘love’, and mache, ‘fight’), called in English
Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna
and a famous example of early printing. First published in Venice
in 1499, in an elegant page layout, with refined woodcut
illustrations in an Early Renaissance style, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili presents a mysterious arcane allegory
in which Poliphilo pursues his love Polia through a dreamlike landscape, and is, seemingly, at last reconciled with her by the Fountain of Venus.
in Venice
in December 1499. The book is anonymous
, but an acrostic
formed by the first, elaborately decorated letter in each chapter in the original Italian reads POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT, "Brother Francesco Colonna
has dearly loved Polia." Despite this, scholars have also attributed the book to Leon Battista Alberti, and earlier, to Lorenzo de Medici. The latest contribution in this respect was the attribution to Aldus Manutius
, and arguably, a Francesco Colonna, a wealthy Roman Governor. The author of the illustrations is even less certain.
The subject matter lies within the tradition of the genre of Romance
within the conventions of courtly love
, which still provided engaging thematic matter for Quattrocento
aristocrats. The Hypnerotomachia also draws from a humanist tradition of arcane writings as a demonstration of classical thought.
The text of the book is written in a bizarre Latin
ate Italian
, full of words based on Latin and Greek
roots
without explanation. The book, however, also includes words from the Italian language, as well as illustrations including Arabic and Hebrew words; Colonna also invented new languages when the ones available to him were inaccurate. (It also contains some uses of Egyptian
hieroglyphs, but they are not authentic, most being drawn from Horapollo's erroneous volume of symbolism.) Its story, which is set in 1467, consists of precious and elaborate descriptions of scenes involving the title character, Poliphilo ("Friend of Many Things", from Greek Polloi "Many" + Philos "Friend"), as he wanders a sort of bucolic
-classical dreamland in search of his love Polia ("Many Things"). The author's style is elaborately descriptive and unsparing in its use of superlatives. The text makes frequent references to classical geography and mythology, mostly by way of comparison.
The book has long been sought after as one of the most beautiful incunabula
ever printed. The typography
is famous for its quality and clarity, in a roman typeface cut by Francesco Griffo
, a revised version of a type which Aldus had first used in 1496 for the De Aetna of Pietro Bembo
. The type was revived by the Monotype Corporation
in 1923 as Poliphilus. Another revival, of the earlier version of Griffo's type, was completed under the direction of Stanley Morison
in 1929 as Bembo
. The type is thought to be one of the first examples of the italic typeface, and unique to the Aldine Press in incunabula.
The book is illustrated with 168 exquisite woodcut
s showing the scenery, architectural settings, and some of the characters Poliphilo encounters in his dreams. They depict scenes from Poliphilo's adventures, or the architectural features over which the text rhapsodizes, in a simultaneously stark and ornate line art
style which perfectly integrates with the type. These images are also interesting because they shed light on what people in the Renaissance
fancied about the alleged æsthetic
qualities of Greek
and Roman
antiquities.
The psychologist
Carl Jung
admired the book, believing the dream images presaged his theory of archetype
s. The style of the woodcut illustrations had a great influence on late-nineteenth century English illustrators, such as Aubrey Beardsley
, Walter Crane
, and Robert Anning Bell
.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was partially translated into English
in a London
edition of 1592 by "R. D.", believed to be Robert Dallington
, who gave it the title by which it is best known in English, The Strife of Love in a Dream. The first complete English version was published in 1999, five hundred years after the original, translated by musicologist Joscelyn Godwin
. However the translation uses standard, modern language, rather than following the original's pattern of coining and borrowing words.
The complete Russian translation by art historian Boris Sokolov is now in progress, of which the "Cythera Island" part was published in 2005 and is available online. The book is planned as a precise reconstruction of the original layout, with Cyrillic types and typography by Sergei Egorov.
Eight of the monuments described in the Hypnerotomachia were reconstructed by computer graphics
and published by Esteban A. Cruz in 2006.
The book begins with Poliphilo, who has spent a restless night because his beloved, Polia (literally "Many Things"), shunned him. Poliphilo is transported into a wild forest, where he gets lost, encounters dragons, wolves and maidens and a large variety of architecture, escapes, and falls asleep once more.
He then awakens in a second dream, dreamed within the first. In the dream, he is taken by some nymphs to meet their queen, and there he is asked to declare his love for Polia, which he does. He is then directed by two nymphs to three gates. He chooses the third, and there he discovers his beloved. They are taken by some more nymphs to a temple to be engaged. Along the way they come across five triumphal processions celebrating the union of the lovers. Then they are taken to the island of Cythera by barge, with Cupid
as the boatswain; there they see another triumphal procession celebrating their union. The narrative is uninterrupted, and a second voice takes over, as Polia describes his erotomachia from her own point of view.
Poliphilo resumes his narrative after one-fifth of the book. Polia rejects Poliphilo, but Cupid appears to her in a vision and compels her to return and kiss Poliphilo, who has fallen into a deathlike swoon at her feet, back to life. Venus blesses their love, and the lovers are united at last. As Poliphilo is about to take Polia into his arms, Polia vanishes into thin air and Poliphilo wakes up.
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna was an Italian Dominican priest and monk who was credited with the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by an acrostic in the text.He lived in Venice, and preached at St. Mark's Cathedral...
and a famous example of early printing. First published in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
in 1499, in an elegant page layout, with refined woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
illustrations in an Early Renaissance style, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili presents a mysterious arcane allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
in which Poliphilo pursues his love Polia through a dreamlike landscape, and is, seemingly, at last reconciled with her by the Fountain of Venus.
History
The book was printed by Aldus ManutiusAldus Manutius
Aldus Pius Manutius , the Latinised name of Aldo Manuzio —sometimes called Aldus Manutius, the Elder to distinguish him from his grandson, Aldus Manutius, the Younger—was an Italian humanist who became a printer and publisher when he founded the Aldine Press at Venice.His publishing legacy includes...
in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
in December 1499. The book is anonymous
Anonymous work
Anonymous works are works, such as art or literature, that have an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author. In the United States it is legally defined as "a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author."...
, but an acrostic
Acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous...
formed by the first, elaborately decorated letter in each chapter in the original Italian reads POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT, "Brother Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna was an Italian Dominican priest and monk who was credited with the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by an acrostic in the text.He lived in Venice, and preached at St. Mark's Cathedral...
has dearly loved Polia." Despite this, scholars have also attributed the book to Leon Battista Alberti, and earlier, to Lorenzo de Medici. The latest contribution in this respect was the attribution to Aldus Manutius
Aldus Manutius
Aldus Pius Manutius , the Latinised name of Aldo Manuzio —sometimes called Aldus Manutius, the Elder to distinguish him from his grandson, Aldus Manutius, the Younger—was an Italian humanist who became a printer and publisher when he founded the Aldine Press at Venice.His publishing legacy includes...
, and arguably, a Francesco Colonna, a wealthy Roman Governor. The author of the illustrations is even less certain.
The subject matter lies within the tradition of the genre of Romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
within the conventions of courtly love
Courtly love
Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....
, which still provided engaging thematic matter for Quattrocento
Quattrocento
The cultural and artistic events of 15th century Italy are collectively referred to as the Quattrocento...
aristocrats. The Hypnerotomachia also draws from a humanist tradition of arcane writings as a demonstration of classical thought.
The text of the book is written in a bizarre Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
ate Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, full of words based on Latin and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
roots
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
without explanation. The book, however, also includes words from the Italian language, as well as illustrations including Arabic and Hebrew words; Colonna also invented new languages when the ones available to him were inaccurate. (It also contains some uses of Egyptian
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
hieroglyphs, but they are not authentic, most being drawn from Horapollo's erroneous volume of symbolism.) Its story, which is set in 1467, consists of precious and elaborate descriptions of scenes involving the title character, Poliphilo ("Friend of Many Things", from Greek Polloi "Many" + Philos "Friend"), as he wanders a sort of bucolic
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
-classical dreamland in search of his love Polia ("Many Things"). The author's style is elaborately descriptive and unsparing in its use of superlatives. The text makes frequent references to classical geography and mythology, mostly by way of comparison.
The book has long been sought after as one of the most beautiful incunabula
Incunabulum
Incunable, or sometimes incunabulum is a book, pamphlet, or broadside, that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe...
ever printed. The typography
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
is famous for its quality and clarity, in a roman typeface cut by Francesco Griffo
Francesco Griffo
Francesco Griffo , also called Francesco da Bologna, was a fifteenth-century Venetian punchcutter. He worked for Aldus Manutius, designing that printer's more important typefaces, including the first italic type...
, a revised version of a type which Aldus had first used in 1496 for the De Aetna of Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch...
. The type was revived by the Monotype Corporation
Monotype Corporation
Monotype Imaging Holdings is a Delaware corporation based in Woburn, Massachusetts and specializing in typesetting and typeface design as well as text and imaging solutions for use with consumer electronics devices. Monotype Imaging Holdings is the owner of Monotype Imaging Inc., Linotype,...
in 1923 as Poliphilus. Another revival, of the earlier version of Griffo's type, was completed under the direction of Stanley Morison
Stanley Morison
Stanley Morison was an English typographer, designer and historian of printing.Born in Wanstead, Essex, Morison spent most of his childhood and early adult years at the family home in Fairfax Road, Harringay...
in 1929 as Bembo
Bembo
Bembo is the name given to a 20th-century revival of an old style serif or humanist typeface cut by Francesco Griffo around 1495.The typeface Bembo seen today is a revival designed under the direction of Stanley Morison for the Monotype Corporation in 1929.It is considered a good choice for...
. The type is thought to be one of the first examples of the italic typeface, and unique to the Aldine Press in incunabula.
The book is illustrated with 168 exquisite woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
s showing the scenery, architectural settings, and some of the characters Poliphilo encounters in his dreams. They depict scenes from Poliphilo's adventures, or the architectural features over which the text rhapsodizes, in a simultaneously stark and ornate line art
Line art
Line art is any image that consists of distinct straight and curved lines placed against a background, without gradations in shade or hue to represent two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects...
style which perfectly integrates with the type. These images are also interesting because they shed light on what people in the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
fancied about the alleged æsthetic
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
qualities of Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and Roman
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
antiquities.
The psychologist
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
admired the book, believing the dream images presaged his theory of archetype
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
s. The style of the woodcut illustrations had a great influence on late-nineteenth century English illustrators, such as Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
, Walter Crane
Walter Crane
Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most prolific and influential children’s book creator of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of...
, and Robert Anning Bell
Robert Anning Bell
Robert Anning Bell was an English artist and designer.He was born in London in 1863, the son of Robert George Bell, a cheesemonger, and Mary Charlotte Knight. He studied at University College School, the Westminster College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, followed by a time in Paris. On...
.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was partially translated into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
in a London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
edition of 1592 by "R. D.", believed to be Robert Dallington
Robert Dallington
Sir Robert Dallington was an English courtier, travel writer and translator, and master of the London Charterhouse.-Life:He was born at Geddington, Northamptonshire. He entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and was there from about 1575 to 1580; from his incorporation at Oxford as M.A. it is...
, who gave it the title by which it is best known in English, The Strife of Love in a Dream. The first complete English version was published in 1999, five hundred years after the original, translated by musicologist Joscelyn Godwin
Joscelyn Godwin
Joscelyn Godwin is a composer, musicologist and translator, known for his work on ancient music, paganism and music in the occult....
. However the translation uses standard, modern language, rather than following the original's pattern of coining and borrowing words.
The complete Russian translation by art historian Boris Sokolov is now in progress, of which the "Cythera Island" part was published in 2005 and is available online. The book is planned as a precise reconstruction of the original layout, with Cyrillic types and typography by Sergei Egorov.
Eight of the monuments described in the Hypnerotomachia were reconstructed by computer graphics
Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
and published by Esteban A. Cruz in 2006.
Plot summary
He then awakens in a second dream, dreamed within the first. In the dream, he is taken by some nymphs to meet their queen, and there he is asked to declare his love for Polia, which he does. He is then directed by two nymphs to three gates. He chooses the third, and there he discovers his beloved. They are taken by some more nymphs to a temple to be engaged. Along the way they come across five triumphal processions celebrating the union of the lovers. Then they are taken to the island of Cythera by barge, with Cupid
Cupid
In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...
as the boatswain; there they see another triumphal procession celebrating their union. The narrative is uninterrupted, and a second voice takes over, as Polia describes his erotomachia from her own point of view.
Allusions/references from other works
- The book is briefly mentioned in The Histories of Gargantua and PantagruelGargantua and PantagruelThe Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father and his son and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein...
(1532-34) by François RabelaisFrançois RabelaisFrançois Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
: "Far otherwise did heretofore the sages of Egypt, when they wrote by letters, which they called hieroglyphics, which none understood who were not skilled in the virtue, property, and nature of the things represented by them. Of which Orus Apollon hath in Greek composed two books, and Polyphilus, in his Dream of Love, set down more..." (Book 1, Ch. 9.) - Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Discovering Antiquity Through The Dreams Of Poliphilus (2007) by Esteban Alejandro Cruz features more than 50 original colour reconstructions of the architecture and topiary gardens of eight monuments described in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: A Great Pyramid, A Great Hippodromus, An Elephant bearing an Obelisk, A Monument to the Un-Happy Horse, the Grand Arch, The Palace and Gardens of Queen Eleutirillide (Liberty), The Temple to Venus Physizoa, and the Polyandrion (Cemetery of Lost Loves).
- Polyphilo: or The Dark Forest Revisited - An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture (1992) is a modern re-writing of Polyphilo's tale by Alberto Pérez-GómezAlberto Pérez-GómezAlberto Pérez-Gómez is an architectural historian and is also known as a theorist and a promoter of phenomenology. Born December 24, 1949 in Mexico City, Mexico, he graduated as an engineer and architect from the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico and pursued graduate studies in the history...
. The non-fictional preface to this book by this eminent architectural historian is an excellent introduction to the Hypnerotomachia. - Gypnerotomahiya (Гипнэротомахия, 1992) is an 8-minute RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n animation directed by Andrey Svislotskiy of Pilot Animation Studio made based on the novelNovelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
of the same title. http://www.animator.ru/db/?ver=eng&p=show_film&fid=4810 - The 1993 novelNovelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
The Club DumasThe Club DumasThe Club Dumas is a 1993 novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The book is set in a world of antiquarian booksellers echoing his previous work, The Flanders Panel....
by Arturo Pérez-ReverteArturo Pérez-ReverteArturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez is a Spanish novelist and journalist. He worked as a war correspondent for twenty-one years . His first novel, El húsar, set in the Napoleonic Wars, was released in 1986. He is well known outside Spain for his "Alatriste" series of novels...
mentions the 1545 edition of the Hypnerotomachia (Ch. 3). The book is again mentioned in PolanskiRoman PolanskiRoman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
's 1999 film, The Ninth GateThe Ninth GateThe Ninth Gate is a 1999 horror film directed, produced, and co-written by Roman Polanski. It is a neo-noir, occult mystery thriller involving the rare book business, wherein rare-book dealer Dean Corso is hired by bibliophile Boris Balkan to validate a seventeenth-century copy of The Nine Gates...
, based loosely on Pérez-Reverte's novel (this time, by its Italian title, "La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo"). - The title and many themes of John CrowleyJohn CrowleyJohn Crowley is an American author of fantasy, science fiction and mainstream fiction. He studied at Indiana University and has a second career as a documentary film writer...
's 1994 novel Love & Sleep (part of his ÆgyptÆgyptÆgypt is a sequence of four novels by John Crowley. The work describes the work and life of Pierce Moffett, who prepares a manuscript for publication even as it prepares him for some as-yet unknown destiny, all set amidst strange and subtle Hermetic manipulations among the Faraway Hills at the...
series) were derived from the Hypnerotomachia. - In the 2004 novel The Rule of FourThe Rule of FourThe Rule of Four is a novel written by American authors Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, and published in 2004. Caldwell, a Princeton University graduate, and Thomason, a Harvard College graduate, are childhood friends who wrote the book after their respective graduations.The Rule of Four reached...
by Ian CaldwellIan CaldwellIan Caldwell is an American novelist. After graduating from Princeton University in 1998, he and his childhood friend Dustin Thomason co-wrote the semi-autobiographical The Rule of Four, which was published in 2004....
and Dustin ThomasonDustin ThomasonDustin Thomason is an American writer. He co-wrote the 2004 novel The Rule of Four with his childhood friend Ian Caldwell.The Rule of Four reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller list, where it remained for more than six months. The book was a number-one national and international...
, two students try to decode the mysteries of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. - Umberto EcoUmberto EcoUmberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
's 2004 novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen LoanaThe Mysterious Flame of Queen LoanaThe Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is a novel by Italian writer Umberto Eco. It was first published in Italian in 2004, and an English language translation by Geoffrey Brock was published in spring 2005...
features a protagonist whose doctoral thesis was written on the Hypnerotomachia.
The original 1499 edition
- The Electronic Hypnerotomachia: facsimile and discussion, from the MIT PressMIT PressThe MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
- rarebookroom.org: high-resolution scan of a copy in the Library of Congress
- high-resolution scan of a copy of the Herzog August BibliothekHerzog August BibliothekThe Herzog August Library , in Wolfenbüttel, , known also as Bibliotheca Augusta, it has an international importance for its collection from the Middle Ages and Early modern Europe. The library is overseen by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture...
Wolfenbüttel - In PDF, TXT (ZIP), and RTF (ZIP) formats from Liber Liber
- Facsimile of thirteen pages, with a five-minute reading from Godwin's 1999 translation (from the State Library of VictoriaState Library of VictoriaThe State Library of Victoria is the central library of the state of Victoria, Australia, located in Melbourne. It is on the block bounded by Swanston, La Trobe, Russell, and Little Lonsdale streets, in the northern centre of the central business district...
) - http://vimeo.com/28198568
The 1592 English edition
- Hypnerotomachia, from Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
- The Strife of Love in a Dreame In PDF or DJVU, and beta flip-book formats
The Russian edition
- http://www.gardenhistory.ru/page.php?pageid=94 (travel to Cythera Island)
Background and interpretation
- Book of the Month article from the Glasgow UniversityUniversity of GlasgowThe University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...
Library's Special Collections Department