Medieval Mythography

by Chance, Jane

• ISBN13: 9780813017952
• ISBN10: 0813017955
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

"A remarkable achievement. Its breadth and depth give readers a stunning view of these important mythographic writers."-J. Stephen Russell, Hofstra University The second volume in Jane Chance's study of the history of medieval mythography from the 5th through the 15th centuries focuses on the time period in Western Europe between the School of Chartres and the papal court at Avignon. This examination of historical and philosophical developments in the story of mythography reflects the ever-increasing importance of the subjectivity of the commentator. In this period between two great cultural and literary renaissances, Chance shows how scholars working in the most conservative and least literary of genres covertly played out the meaning of new ideas that were too dangerous to espouse publicly. She finds several factors facilitating this development: the assimilation of the classical and moralizing Christian traditions and dissemination of the mythographies of the Martianus commentaries; the advent of the "New Science," Aristotelian philosophy, and its influence on Ovid commentary and mythological exemplum; and the rise in accusations of heresy among scholars and the appearance of mythographic exempla in preaching manuals to counter its popular spread. Through her vast and wide-ranging familiarity with hitherto seldom studied primary texts spanning nearly 1,000 years, Chance provides a guide to the assimilation of classical myth into the Christian Middle Ages. Rich in insight and example, dense in documentation, and compelling in its interpretations, Medieval Mythography is an important tool for scholars of the classical tradition and for medievalists working in any language. Jane Chance is professor of English at Rice University and author of Medieval Mythography, Volume 1: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, AD 433-1177 (winner of the 1994 South Central Modern Language Association Book Prize) and of 13 other books and collections.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	vii
Tables	x
Acknowledgments	xi
Abbreviations and Citation Editions	xv
Chronology of Medieval Mythographers and Commentary Authors	xxii
Introduction. Fabulizing Subjectivity: From Mythographic Ovid and the ``New Science'' of Aristotle to Scholastic Heresy	1	(25)
The ``Material Body'' of Deucalion and Pyrrha: Aristotle and Ovid in the Twelfth Century	26	(71)
Generation, Metamorphosis, and the Condemnation of 1277	33	(17)
Early Virgilized Glosses on the Metamorphoses: Manegold of Lautenbach (fl. 1085--1103) and Ralph of Beauvais (fl. 1160--70)	50	(6)
Arnulf of Orleans (ca. 1180) on the Metamorphoses: The Rationalization of Natural Philosophy	56	(25)
Arnulf of Orleans on the Roman Calendar: The Ex Ritu Romano in the Fasti	81	(16)
Generating Saturn and Personal Narrativity: Reading Ovid through Fulgentius in Twelfth-Century Mythographies	97	(41)
Versifying Fulgentius through Ovid: The ``Fragment on Mythology'' of Baudri [Baldricus] of Bourgueil (1046--1130)	101	(14)
The Ovidian Genealogies in the De Natura Deorum of the Twelfth-Century English Digby Mythographer	115	(23)
The Incorporated Soul as the Self: Proserpina in Pluto's Underworld in the Third Vatican Mythography (ca. 1177)	138	(47)
Scholasticism and Gender: Jupiter Progenitor and Genetrix in De Diis Gentium	146	(9)
Saturn and Cybele as Time and Potentia, Metamorphic Power	155	(6)
The Potentia of the Children of Saturn: Jupiter (Ether), Juno (Air), and Neptune (Water)	161	(8)
Pluto and Proserpina, Rulers of Earth, and the Embodied Self	169	(16)
The Schoolmaster as Artist: Prelatical Mercury and Weaving Proserpina in the Late-Twelfth-Century Mythographic Commentaries of Alexander Neckam and Geoffrey of Vitry	185	(46)
Mercury's Displacement of Hymen and the Diis Conjugium in Alexander Neckam's Commentary on Martianus (ca. 1197--1210)	187	(15)
The Stoic Cosmology of Proserpina's Tapestry: Geoffrey of Vitry's Commentary on Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae (late twelfth century)	202	(12)
The Primacy of the World: The Etymological Dictionaries of Papias the Lombard, Osbern Pinnock of Gloucester, Huguccio of Pisa, and Giovanni Balbi of Genoa	214	(17)
``Rarificat Nebulas, Integumenta Canit'': Personalizing Aristotle in John of Garland's Versified Ovid Commentary (ca. 1234)	231	(22)
``Singing the Integument'': Inversion and Innovation in the Integumenta	236	(6)
``Rarifying the Clouds'': Essentializing Aristotelian Change in the Integumenta	242	(11)
Saturn as Prudence, Jupiter as Love, Juno as Memory: The Psychology of Individuation in the Oxford Mythographers of the 1330s	253	(67)
The Problem of Human Knowing in the Underworld: Dominican Nicholas Trivet's Aristotelian Boethius and Seneca Glosses (ca. 1300--1315)	262	(18)
The Portraits of the Gods and the Faculties of the Incorporated Soul: Franciscan John Ridewall's Augustinian Mythography, Fulgentius Metaforalis (ca. 1331)	280	(24)
The Individuated Gods in the Mythographic Preaching of Dominican Ockhamite Robert Holkot (fl. 1332-34; d. 1349?)	304	(16)
The Mythography of the Personal: Pierre Bersuire's Ovidius Moralizatus and the Castration of Saturn (ca. 1342-1350s)	320	(57)
Toward a Subjective Mythography: The Historical Fabula as Littera	326	(14)
The Consequences of Saturn's Castration in De Formis Figurisque Deorum: The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis and the Problem of Free Will	340	(15)
Prelatical and Gendered Mythographies in the Ovidius Moralizatus, Chapters 2-16	355	(22)
Notes	377	(72)
Bibliography	449	(34)
Index	483