Description:
This article seeks to explain the development of the epillionic genre at the end of the sixteenth century and to define its major characteristics. It will explore the relationship between the Elizabethan epyllia and their Ovidian hypotext, and show how the Renaissance poems transformed the classical myths in matters of form and substance. It will also be affirmed that the minor epics form a system of intertextual reading in which mythology can be used as a rhetorical ornament and a poetical weapon.