Classical Mythology

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN LITERATURE AND ART 675

supremely important in bringing about the revival of classical mythology that
reached its climax in Renaissance literature and art. In the Middle Ages classi-
cal and biblical history and mythology were mingled without distinction be-
tween history and legend. In the period of the eleventh to the thirteenth century
Ovid's tales were retold not merely for their own sake, but also as vehicles for
moralizing allegory. The goddesses and heroines of the Metamorphoses even ap-
pear as nuns in one work, and a whole series of poems and prose works explain
the Metamorphoses in Christian terms.
This process reached its zenith with the enormous Ovide Moralisé of the early
fourteenth century, a French reworking of the Metamorphoses in which the leg-
ends were interpreted as moral allegories. As an example we give a translation
(from a fifteenth-century French prose summary of the poem) of one of several
interpretations of the legend of Apollo and Daphne:

Here we may suppose that by the maiden Daphne is meant the glorious Virgin

Mary, who was so lowly, pure, and beautiful that God the Father chose her to

conceive his only Son by the work of the Holy Spirit. She carried him for nine

months and then bore him, virgin before the birth and at the birth; virgin after

the birth she remained without ever losing her virginity. This sovereign Virgin

is the laurel, always green in virtue, which God planted in the garden of his par-

adise.

A similar approach is to be found in the translation (from the French of Raoul
le Fèvre) of the Metamorphoses by William Caxton (Ovyde Hys Booke ofMethamor-
phose, 1480):

Another sentence may be had for the storye of Daphne which was a ryght fayre

damoysel.... On a tyme he [Apollo] fonde her alone and anone beganne to

renne after her. And she for to kepe her maydenhode and for to eschewe the

voice of Phebus fledde so faste and asprely [roughly] that al a swoun [all of a

sudden] she fel down dede under a laurel tree. In which place she was entered

[interred] and buryed without deflourynge or towchynge of her vyrgynyte. And

therefore fayneth the fable that she was chaunged and transformed into a lau-

rel tree, whiche is contynuelly grene. Which sygnefyeth the vertu of chasteté.^2

Quaint as the medieval uses of Ovid may seem, they show a lively interest
in classical mythology. Ovid's legends were to return in their full glory in the
art and poetry of the Renaissance, and his poem still remains the single most
fruitful ancient source of classical legend.
Medieval use of classical mythology was not limited to allegory. The ro-
mantic side of Ovid's legends was often preserved. The "most lamentable com-
edy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby" presented by the "rude me-
chanicals" in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has several predecessors
in French, Italian, and English. They appear in Chaucer and Boccaccio, in the
songs of the medieval troubadours, and in the twelfth-century Piramus et Tisbé.
All go back finally to Ovid.