'The obiect whereto all his actions tend':: George!Chapman's 'Ouids Banquet of Sence' and the thrill of the chase

'The object whereto all his actions tend': George Chapman's Ouids Banquet of Sence and the Thrill of the Chase by Martin Wheeler George Chapman's Ouids Banquet of Sence represents an original exegesis of a Neo-platonic eroticism. With reference to Renaissance iconography (including Botticelli's Primavera), contemporary writers (particularly Marsilio Ficino), and other poetical works by Chapman (particularly the Hymnus in Cynthiam), and examination of Chapman's sophisticated use of familiar Renaissance topoi, including the myths of Actaeon and Hercules, previous anti-erotic, anti-rhetorical readings are challenged. The poem confounds expectations, eschewing the moral subversiveness traditionally associated with the epyllion and affirming a Neoplatonic epistemology which rejects its impracticable puritanism and proposes a philosophical model of love in which the erotic has a legitimate place.