Medieval Mythography, vol. 2: From the School of Chartres to the Court at Avignon, 1177–1350 by Jane Chance

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

REVIEWS sion of an index in the volume) that will be required reading for all scholars interested in medieval death studies. Indeed, the volume's analyses of medieval apocalyptics also should prove of interest to nonmedievalists . Bynum and Freedman end their superb introduction by querying the ''confused and blandly optimistic'' approach to death that characterized contemporary U.S. culture around the 2000 publication of the volume, pointing that ''the danger of some sort of nuclear war is probably greater now than in the 1950s.'' Given the events of September 11, 2001, the editor's assertion that at ''the end of the twentieth century we are neither very apocalyptic, nor very eschatological, nor even very scared. Not perhaps, as much as we ought to be'' is well worth heeding. Kathy Lavezzo University of Iowa Jane Chance. Medieval Mythography, vol. 2: From the School of Chartres to the Court at Avignon, 1177–1350. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. Pp. xxvi, 517. $85.00 In the second volume of a projected three-volume study, Jane Chance attempts two difficult tasks: she aims to write a history of mythography, and she intends to unify this history by means of a thematic focus on subjectivity. In order to achieve the first goal, she describes a number of mythographic works from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries , listing their contents, summarizing their major tendencies, and when possible suggesting their historical contexts. As we might expect, this description of individual texts leads in a number of directions, not always conducive to an exploration of subjectivity; as a consequence, the volume's unifying theme is relatively undeveloped though still suggestive . The first chapters seek to establish the importance of Ovid and Aristotle to the development of mythography. Chapter 1 proposes that between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries these two authorities become central influences on mythography: more specifically, writers become interested in Ovid's Metamorphoses and Fasti because those texts facilitate discussions of Aristotelian philosophy and science (in particu389 ................. 9680$$ CH16 11-01-10 12:37:05 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER lar, ideas of generation and metamorphosis). Professor Chance develops this hypothesis primarily in relation to Arnulf of Orleans' commentaries on Ovid's Metamorphoses and Fasti, though she also makes reference to Manegold of Lautenbach, Ralph of Beauvais, and the Anonymous Bruxellensis . She concludes that the ''beginnings of subjectivity in scholastic commentary'' emerge in Arnulf's emphasis on ''the material world, on human sexuality and natural generation, and on gender issues'' (p. 59). This chapter contains three tables: a chronology on ''The Advent of Aristotelianism and the Ovid Commentary'' and two lists of myths in specific works. In the rest of the book, sixteen more tables offer similar information: one discovers lists of myths, gods, and heroes for most of the texts under discussion, which could prove helpful for readers who are intent on locating particular myths or mythic figures in works with obscure organizational patterns. Chapters 2 through 4 investigate a twelfth-century shift away from marginal or interlineal Ovidian glosses and toward separate commentaries ; Chance also discovers in this period a heightened individuality in the form and thematic emphasis of mythographic writing. Chapter 2, for instance, represents Baudri of Bourgueil's ''Fragment on Mythology'' as a personalized verse appropriation of Fulgentius's Mitologiae, with an emphasis on ''the Ovidian dilemma—how to justify the interruption of the study of philosophy by the rude insistence of lust and passion'' (p. 115). Then the Digby mythography evidences the ''scholastic interests of the speaking subject'' (p. 128) particularly in his moralization of Hercules , who becomes an allegorical figure of the wise man. Chapter 3 focuses on the third Vatican mythography (Alberic of London, De diis gentium et illorum allegoriis). Professor Chance posits that this work is organized around the principles of sexual generation and gender balance , an ingenious discovery of coherence in a fairly eclectic encyclopedia . Chapter 4 develops several loosely related topics. The author concentrates on Alexander of Neckam's commentary on Martianus Capella's De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii and Geoffrey of Vitry's commentary on Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae. The ''sexualized'' subjects of these commentaries (i.e., marriage and rape) establish for...