
by Jane Chance
V.1. The mythic world of Juno, Jupiter's consort, is one of flesh and begetting, of suffering and death, and of poetry itself. Exploring the relationship between that realm of the classical gods and the sphere of medieval mythographers, Jane Chance illuminates the efforts of medieval writers to understand human existence and the forces of nature in relation to Christian truth. V. 2. 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 near…
1945
No reviews yet — be the first to write one from the Log screen.
No quotes yet.
Same mood, other forms — books, series, anime, games and beyond.