Mythographie in England 1330-1450

Between 1330 and 1450, a versatile body of mythographic texts emerged in England: in letters and sermons, commentaries, treatises and poems, a narrative cosmos centred around Ovid’s Metamorphoses came to live again. This was not only due to antiquarian interests. The recourse to ancient myth served the cultural self-assertion of the learned clerical elites, whose expert status was increasingly threatened.The present study tries to explain this late blossoming of Anglo-Latin mythography and its development against the background of a larger controversy around religious language and clerical knowledge. The books also introduces the most important representatives of the movement, like Robert Holcot and Thomas Walsinghams as well as critics like John Wyclif.