Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Its Afterlife

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili has been applauded as the most beautifully printed book in the Western Renaissance and the most difficult one to understand. It was once cloaked in mysteries and enigmas, and its influence rippled through literature, art and architecture. It is a love romance of the Italian Renaissance, an encyclopedia in the guise of a novel, and probably the world’s longest book about people dreaming. This paper briefly summarizes its dissemination, influence and the relevant critical views, focusing on its plot, structure, language, rhetoric and other literary characteristics, while making an investigation of its literary genealogy and contemporary inheritance. By analyzing the re-appropriation of the literary formula of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Umberto Eco in his novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, it is argued that excellent worksand brilliant artists can revive our history, tradition and past life, by employing the so-called “Aby Warburg’s Approach”, and thus responding to the issues and concerns