Oddcast episode

April 23, 2025

The Strife of Love in a Dream: James O’Neill Introduces the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

‘It seemed incredibly peculiar …’.

With James O’Neill as our guide, we introduce one of the most baffling esoteric works of the Italian Renaissance, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or ‘The All-Lover’s Dream-Strife’. We discuss:

• the work’s edition by the Aldine Press as a lavish word-and-image production,
• the question of authorship by one Francesco Colonna, most likely a Venetian Dominican of that name,
• and the book’s extraordinary contents, detailing the narrator’s wandering through several dream-within-dream landscapes, each dominated by strange (and strangely-specific) architecture and garden spaces, guided by various strange personages, and generally involving some kind of initiatory dream-journey toward the deepest mysteries of love.

Interview Bio:

James O’Neill cultural historian specialising in the Italian Renaissance. His thesis on Self-Transformation in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili can be found online, and a monograph expanding on that doctoral work, The Allegory of Love in the Early Renaissance: Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and its European Context, is out with with Routledge. Other publications can be browsed here.

Works Cited in this Episode:

Marco Ariani and Mino Gabriele. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: introduzione, traduzione e commento. Gli Adelphi, Milan, 1998.

Mark Booth. The Secret History of the World. Overlook Press, New York, 2008. Originally published: London : Jonathan Cape, 2008.

Maurizio Calvesi. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Nuovi riscontri e nuove evidenze documentarie per Francesco Colonna signore di Preneste. Storia dell’arte, 60: 85–136, 1987.

Joscelyn Godwin, trans. Francesco Colonna. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream. Thames & Hudson, London, 1999.

Anna Khomentovskaia. Felice Feliciano da Verona comme l’auteur de l’ Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. La Bibliofilía, 38(3/4):92–102, 1936.

Emanuela Kretzulesco-Quaranta. L’itinerario archeologico di Polifilo: Leon Battista Alberti come teorico della Magna Porta. Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, 1970.

Liane Lefaivre. Leon Battista Alberti’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997.

Charles Mitchell. Felice Feliciano Antiquarius. Proceedings of the British Academy, xlvii, 1961.

James O’Neill. A Narrative in Search of an Author: The Hypnerotomachia and its Authorial Criticism. International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Science, 2(9):7–19, September 2021.

Idem. Botanical Symbolism in the Hypnerotomachia: Botanical Signifiers of a Humanist Handling of Interior Transformation. Word & Image, 39 (2):192–234, 2023.

Alessandro Parronchi. Eliseo Ruffini da Lucca Servita autore dell’ “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili”. In Omaggio a Gianfranco Folena. Padua, 1963.

Giovanni Pozzi and Lucia A. Ciapponi. La cultura figurativa di Francesco Colonna e l’arte veneta. Lettere Italiane, 14(2):151–169, 1962.

Efthymia Priki. Teaching Eros: The Rhetoric of Love in the “Tale of Livistros and Rodamne,” the “Roman de La Rose,” and the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili”. Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures, (2):210–45, 2016.

Thomas Reiser. Francesco Colonna: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Interlinear-kommentarfassung. Theon Lykos, Leipzig, 2014.

Roswitha Stewering. Architektur und Natur in der “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili” (Manutius 1499) und die Zuschreibung des Werkes an Niccolo Lelio Cosmico. Lit-Ver., Hamburg, 1996.

Recommended Reading:

SHWEP James O’Neill on the Hypnerotomachia Recommended Reading

 

Themes

Alchemy, Apuleius, Dreams, Esoteric Architecture, Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Polyphili, Initiation, Interview, Late Platonism, Macrobius, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Martianus Capella, Middle Platonism, Plato, Polytheism