Alchemical Hands in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Why It Matters for the Hypnerotomachia

Polia narrates Book II of the HP in her own voice, reframing the love story from the beloved's perspective. Her name derives from Greek polis or polios, linking her to antiquity itself. She is both the object of desire and an autonomous narrator with her own account of events.

Why It Matters in Scholarship

Trippe (2002) argues that Polia's narration adapts Petrarchan conventions by giving the beloved a textual voice. This makes the HP unusual among Renaissance love narratives, which typically silence the beloved or reduce her to a visual object.

Key Passages / Evidence

• ... spread by divine impulsion all through me and gradually changed me. Poliphilo Hypnerotomachia (p.419) In the second book of the Hypnerotomachia, an integral part of the narrative of... [O'Neill (Durham thesis)]
• ... narra che fora dii theatro uscirono cum tutto il consortio et cum l’altre nymphe. Ad uno sacro fonte perveneron, ove le nymphe narrano del sepulchro di Adone et come la dea anniversariamente... [Avesani et al. (Colonna studies)]
• <!-- Page 239 --> having elected you as its sole ruler in this age as its first lord… pray be gracious, gentle and benevolent, to assuage my grave sufferings] and ‘Heu me, Polia belissima, immo... [O'Neill (Durham thesis)]

Source Documents

Avesani et al. (Colonna studies); Lefaivre 1997 (Alberti attribution); O'Neill (Durham thesis); Priki 2009 (reception); Russell 2014 (PhD thesis); Semler 2006 (Dallington); Teaching_Eros_The_Rhetoric_of_Love_in_th; Trippe 2002 (text-image)