experimental tension with anti-Petrachan tendencies. In 1620 Marino published La Sampogna, a collection of poems divided into two parts: one consisting of pastoral idylls and another of "rustic" verse. Thus Marino distanced himself from love, heroic and sacred themes in favour of the mythological and bucolic. L'AdoneL'Adone (Adonis), which was published in Paris in 1623 and dedicated to the French king Louis XIII, is a mythological poem written in ottava rima divided into twenty cantos. The plot The poem deals with the love of the goddess Venus for Prince Adonis, who escapes from a sea storm to take refuge on the island of Cyprus, the site of the goddess's palace. Cupid uses his arrows to make his mother and Adonis fall in love with one another. Adonis listens to Cupid and Mercury telling love stories and is then led to the Garden of Pleasure, which is divided into five parts, one for each of the senses, and to the fountain of Apollo. Jealousy warns the god Mars of Venus's new love and he heads for Cyprus. When Adonis finds out Mars is on his way, he flees and is transformed into a parrot for refusing the goddess's love. Having regained his human form thanks to Mercury, he is taken captive by a band of robbers. Adonis returns to Cyprus where he wins a contest of beauty, is made ruler of the island and is reunited with Venus. But Mars has Adonis killed on a hunting expedition by a wild boar. He dies in the arms of Venus and his heart is transformed into a red flower, the anemone. The poem ends with a long description of the funeral games in honour of the dead youth. Narrative technique Into this flimsy framework Marino inserts the most famous stories from mythology, including the Judgement of Paris, Cupid and Psyche, Echo and Narcissus, Hero and Leander, Polyphemus and numerous others. Thus the poem, which was originally intended to be only three cantos in length, was so enriched that it became one of the longest epics in Italian literature, made up of 5123 eight-line stanzas (40,984 verses), an immense story with digressions from the main theme and descriptive pauses. All this tends to characterise "L’Adone" as a labyrinth of entangled situations without any real structure. The lengthy Canto XX, which takes place after the protagonist's death, serves to undermine any pretence to narrative unity.