One of the early incunabula is an enigmatic book, part fictional narrative and part scholarly treatise, called Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, roughly translated as "Strife of Love in a Dream." From the uncertainty of its author to its difficult title to its baffling prose, it is one of the most fascinating books ever created. The book has been attributed to both Leon Battista Alberti and to Francesco Colonna. The author uses the book to show his vast knowledge of architecture, garden design, engineering, painting, and sculpture. The original text includes a pandemonium of unruly sentences in Tuscan, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean, and hieroglyphs. Recently it has been translated into English by Joscelyn Godwin and is available on the Museum of Jurassic Technology bookstore website.
Hypnerotomachia is essentially a romance in the medieval tradition that reached its peak in the 1300s. This literary art about Chivalry and Love celebrated the knight, swordplay, jousting, hunting, great military deeds, and winning the love and devotion of a lady. The art form coincided with the emergence of Courtly Love, involving the romantic attentions of a knight toward another man's wife. The literature signified a dramatic change in attitude toward women. Now women were exalted to goddess-like status, whereas before they were barely mentioned. Women of magnanimity of spirit are objects worthy of courtly love, because they embody a worshipful ideal. This type of literature delves into the conflicted nature of sexual and marital relations in the Middle Ages, and the conflict between worldly and short-lived desires of the flesh versus a refining exalted ideal.
Hypnerotomachia brings together all the stereotypical characters traditionally associated with the medieval romance genre: enamored hero and indifferent heroine attended by nymphs, naiads, satyrs, gods and goddesses. They sing, dance, make merry in beautiful glades near babbling brooks and in enclosed gardens in a typical plot of the lover's quest to win the heart of his heroine ultimately for the illusion to be dashed. At the opening, the hero, Poliphilio, has spent a restless night because his beloved, Polia, has shunned him. He falls into a deep slumber, then wakes in a dream, finding himself in a mysterious landscape of shards and ruins. He gets lost, escapes, falls asleep once more. He awakens in a second dream where he is taken to a nymph queen to declare his love for Polia. After many adventures, the two are wed, but Polia vanishes into thin air as Poliphilio is about to take her into his arms.
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