The Etna Idea

As a preface of sorts to our later investigation (especially in Chapter 6) of the symbolic properties of Pietro Bembo’s representation of Mount Etna, Chapter 1 explores the rich diversity of Greco-Roman treatments of the volcano from Pindar down to Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, and the so-called Aetna poem (its authorship unknown). In mapping the Classical dimensions and contours of the cumulative Etna Idea, this chapter not only functions as a form of excavation into the literary geology of Pietro’s mountain, but also defines the question that much of the rest of this study seeks to address: in what ways, and to what extent, does Pietro challenge, exploit, and depart from (even upstage) the imaginative applications that are already encoded in Etna’s literary past?