Reexamining Two Mythological Ballads from Christine de Pizan’s Cent Balades
Journal Title: Studia Litterarum - Year 2018, Vol 3, Issue 1
Abstract
The article analyzes two mythological ballads from Christine de Pizan’s early collection Cent Balades (1399–1411). I propose to interpret them against allegorical commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a poem Ovide moralise and two treatises — Pierre Bersuire’s Ovididius moralizatus and Boccaccio’s De genealogia deorum gentilium. These works help us understand the ballad XC that critics have traditionally considered mysterious. The ballad tells the story of Adonis and his early death. Christine was familiar with the commentary on Metamorphoses that rendered the poem allegorically. The ballad can be therefore read as a story of the struggle for the human soul where Adonis emblematizes youth, Vulcan — desire, Pallas — wisdom, Juno — will, Jupiter — Supreme Reason, and Mercury — eloquence. Adonis must overcome corporeal passion voluntarily — this is the moral lesson that Christine gives in the allegorical form to her reader. Her relation of human will to reason is similar to that of Thomas Aquinas. The poem Ovide moralisé and Bersuire’s Ovididius moralizatus shed light on the allegorical subtext of the ballad LXI that narrates the love story of Io and Jupiter. Io epitomizes a sinful human soul temporarily deprived of humanity that, however, returns to the beloved — Jupiter, or God. The analysed poems demonstrate Christine’s taste for allegorical and obscure poetry that Boccaccio defended in his De genealogia deorum gentilium.
Authors and Affiliations
L. V. Evdokimova
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26206
- DOI 10.22455/2500-4247-2018-3-1-68-87
- Views 318
- Downloads 16
BOUNDARIES BETWEEN FICTION AND FACT IN THE LIGHT OF THE THREE LEVEL COMPARATIVE STUDIES
The author’s aim is to reconsider the difference between fact and fiction in diachronic, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspective. The study covers a long period, mainly from the 17th Century to the present time,...
Allegory, Poetrie, Rhetoric: On the Notion of Poetic Fiction in France at the End of the 15 th Century
The allegorical dimension of the text in the early French Renaissance culture became, under the influence of Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, the main argument in the defense of poetic fiction (fabula). However...
“Between Death and Life” by A.N. Apukhtin: Reincarnation Plot as the Narrative Problem
A. N. Apukhtin’s story “Between Death and Life” (written shortly before the author’s death) was not published during his lifetime and has been largely overlooked by Russian scholars. However, it is interesting for its...
PORTRAIT IN LITERATURE AND GRAPHIC ART: THE CASE OF THE FIERY ANGEL
This essay analyzes portraits in several editions of The Fiery Angel published during Bryusov’s lifetime and claims that the portrait was as a universal point of convergence for verbal and visual arts. The dialogue bet...
INTERACTION OF VARIOUS GENERIC FORMS IN THE 12TH–17TH CENTURY TEXTS AND THE MINDSETS OF OLD RUSSIAN AUTHORS
The essay focuses on the understudied question of the poetics of Old Russian literature: it is the frst study of the kind that analyzes semantic interaction of different generic forms in the works of the period. The ess...