Renaissance Secularism Revised: the Case of the Prodigal Son

This essay argues that the Renaissance encounter with pagan, classical texts is marked by ambivalence, an uneasy awareness of the gap between classical and Christian. It explores the Christian goals of an Erasmian, humanist imitation through the influential Latin play Acolastus (1529). In fusing Terentian comedy with the parable of the prodigal son, Acolastus harnesses classical texts to support Christian meanings. And yet, its purposeful embrace of classical models produces a particularly Christian sense of loss: the father loses his son into a Roman world of prodigality and despair. Acolastus’s ambivalence around classical imitation resonated widely, as apparent in William Shakespeare’s own Roman-style comedy, The Comedy of Errors.