Divided into 12 books, each eponymously entitled with a zodiac sign, the roughly 10,000 hexametric verses of the Zodiacus Vitae cover a wide range of topics that attempt to lead the reader to the supposedly right disposition of life. In its narrative passages, the speaker, on his search for the summum bonum, visits various places on earth and beyond where he meets manifold figures, both historical such as Epicurus and allegorical such as the personified Virtue, to teach him about life and death, earthly and spiritual goods. In the rather essayistic text sections, the narrator discusses topics directly applicable to the everyday life of man, for instance marriage, education, and adequate means of subsistence, as well as more obscure and metaphysical issues, such as when he talks about the ontology of the human soul, God, and the universe. In all likelihood, his rationalising tendencies as well as his numerous denunciations of the reportedly decadent church

have bestowed upon Palingenius a well-earned place in the first edition of the index librorum prohibitorum promulgated by the Catholic Church in 1559. Nevertheless, subsequently more than 68 editions were printed in Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and England, where its wide use as a schoolbook influenced important Renaissance poets such as William Shakespeare and John Milton.

The first step of my work is to explicitly identify heteronomous literary patterns the Zodiacus Vitae is so amply filled with. For instance, the reader will come upon generic patterns redolent of the bucolic or the epic genre. Or he will witness the speaker visiting the underworld – a common motif in classic literature called descensus or κατάβασις – and find the narrator lamenting a degenerated world and comparing it to a comedy – the theatrum mundi. By contrasting these patterns with their respective pre-texts or, more generally, with literary convention, I will then be able to extract the degree of autonomy with which the author remodels the tradition. By answering the question of why the author uses a particular tactic in a given instance, I hope to ultimately be able to draw more holistic conclusions regarding the literary value of the Zodiacus Vitae, its purpose, and its intended readership.