Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski Figurae | sku-432372082

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski All Books listing, SKU sku-432372082. This hardcover examines how French writers used and transformed classical mythology from the mid-twelfth century to about 1430. Across five chapters, it asks why writers changed classical myths, how poets brought them into their own texts, and whether vernacular works developed a distinct way of interpreting them. Chapter 1 discusses the political use of Latin epic in the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman realm and how added Ovidian elements suggested forms of disorder beyond those in classical epic. Chapter 2 examines myth in the thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose, including its treatment of language, artistic expression and sexuality. Chapter 3 considers terms such as "allegory," "fable" and istoire in the fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé. It argues that the Christianized Metamorphoses presented a "new Ovid" as a fourteenth-century friar. Chapter 4 describes how Guillaume de Machaut questioned the usefulness of mythic fables while using them for artistic consolation and to defend his poetic voice. It also covers Jean Froissart's combinations of existing fables and invented elements to dramatize poetic creativity. Chapter 5 follows Christine de Pizan's use of mythographic tradition, her place in Ovidian myths, historical explanations, pro-woman rewritings and mythic worlds of her own.