ABSTRACT
The trend towards attributing an eschatological significance to the ocean voyage of Columbus and an increasingly divine nature to the Admiral himself, is particularly evident in Gabriello Chiabrera's 1591 poem, Per Cristoforo Colombo. Chiabrera's desire to curry favor with those who had facilitated his return to Rome helps to explain his poem's insistence on Columbus as an Italian agent of the cross sailing in the service of the Christian faith rather than as an employee of the Spanish monarchs. Tommaso Stigliani's Columbus epic, Il mondo nuovo, relies heavily on this groundwork in the further evolution of the "man from Liguria," who is both Dantesque and almost divine. Stigliani's enthusiasm for Columbus's great enterprise, not surprisingly, also evidences a tension between Dante's denunciation of Ulysses's hunger for unauthorized knowledge and an Italian weariness with the confines of the old world.
