This book focuses on the advent of hybrid mythography in the Middle Ages as a form of commentary in vernacular poetry and, alternatively, as restyled and reformatted Latin prose commentary that reflects allegorical authorial self-projection. The complexity of mythography leads to the compilation of myths unified by traditional means—genealogy and history—but also by new means, a focus on a seminal progenitor or epic hero or imaginary goddess who reflects a humanist ideal. Humanism carries with it a privileging of the individual, the personal and subjective, and, most interestingly, a democrati ... More

This book focuses on the advent of hybrid mythography in the Middle Ages as a form of commentary in vernacular poetry and, alternatively, as restyled and reformatted Latin prose commentary that reflects allegorical authorial self-projection. The complexity of mythography leads to the compilation of myths unified by traditional means—genealogy and history—but also by new means, a focus on a seminal progenitor or epic hero or imaginary goddess who reflects a humanist ideal. Humanism carries with it a privileging of the individual, the personal and subjective, and, most interestingly, a democratization that spurns the aristocratic, the ecclesiastical, and the allegorical. Innovative strategies alter the traditional polyphonic basis of mythography by emphasizing the literal and historical in place of the allegorical. The rise of Italian (or Franco-Italian) commentators—Dante, Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, Salutati, and Landino, among others—and, with them, the emergence of Tuscan Italian as the descendant of medieval Latin, is accompanied by debate over appropriateness in learned texts. The major mythographic commentary traditions of Virgil, Ovid, and Boethius continue, joined by entirely new commentary-authors. New forms of mythographic and legendary manual, in which men or women are for the most part featured separately, usher in yet another sign of changing times: the education of women and their increasing role as an audience and as commentary authors. Finally, with the rise of the vernacular, the transmission of new works by manuscript copy and early printing spreads the awareness of both new and old commentary traditions.