Juan de Mena's Ovidian material: an Alfonsine influence?
1978; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 55; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1475382782000355005
ISSN1469-3550
Autores Tópico(s)Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: ALFONSO X, KING OF CASTILE & LEÓN [ALFONSO EL SABIO] (1221–1284)MENA, JUAN DE (1411–1456)OVID/OVIDIO [PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO] (43BC–17AD) Notes 1. See Rudolph Schevill, Ovid and the Renascence in Spain (Berkeley 1913), for the development of interest in Ovid. A briefer survey is provided by Dorothy M. Robathan, ‘Ovid in the Middle Ages’, in Ovid, ed.J.W. Binns (London 1973), 191–209. 2. John of Garland, Integumenta Ovidii: poemetto inedito del secolo XIII, ed. Fausto Ghisalberti (Messina-Milano 1933). 3. Fausto Ghisalberti, Arnolfo d’Orléans: un cultare di Ovidio nel secolo XII (Milano 1932). Ghisalberti says that this originally emerged as part of the above work of John of Garland. 4. This work first appeared about 1342.11 is ed. by Fausto Ghisalberti: ‘L’ Ovidius Moralizatus di Pierre Bersuire’, Studii Romanzi, XXIII (1933), 1–136. A fifteenth-century manuscript of Morales de Ovidio, a Castilian translation of Bersuire, belonged to the Marqués de Santillana, and is now in the Biblioteca Nacional: Mario Schiff, La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santüïane (Paris 1905), 84–88. 5. C. de Boer, Ovide moralisé: poème du commencement du quatorzième siècle, 2 vols. (Amsterdam 1915–20). De Boer dates this work at 1305 but Joseph Engels, Etudes sur l’Ovide moralisé (Groningen 1945), says that it was written between 1316 and 1328. 6. Ovide moralisé en prose ( text of the fifteenth century ), ed. C. de Boer (Amsterdam 1954). A study of the development of the allegorical approach to classical literature, with special emphasis on Ovid, can be found in Lester K. Born, ‘Ovid and allegory’, Speculum, IX (1934), 362–79. See also William J. Kennedy, ‘Irony, allegoresis and allegory in Virgil, Ovid and Dante’, Arcadia, VIII (1972), 115–34. 7. General estoria, I, ed. A. G. Solalinde (Madrid 1930); II, ed. Solalinde, Lloyd A. Kasten, and Victor R. B. Oeschlager, 2 vols. (Madrid 1957–61). See also Francisco Rico, Alfonso el Sabio y la General estoria: tres lecciones (Esplugues de Llobregat 1972 . 8. For example: Ovid, Metamorphoses, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. (London 1916, repr. 1966J. 9. Solalinde first makes this point in RFE, I ¡1914 ,105, and reinforces it in subsequent articles: RFE, VIII 11921 .285–88; RFE, XV ( 1928), p. 4 note 4; GE, part I (Madrid 1930), 15. 10. Études sur l’Ovide moralisé, 3ff. 11. ‘Putative Heroides Codex AX as a source of Alfonsine literature’, RPh, III (1949–50), 275–89. 12. ‘The role of Ovid's Metamorphoses in the General estoria of Alfonso el Sabio’, unpublished dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1971, 47–54. 13. ‘A thirteenth-century Spanish version of Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe’ , MLR, L (1955), 147–55, at pp. 148–49. 14. Études, 21. 15. ‘Putative Heroides Codex AX’, 287–88. For further information on the sources of the GE see Daniel Eisenberg, ‘The General estoria: sources and source treatment’, ZRPh, LXXXIX (1973), 206–27. 16. Juan de Mena, poeta del prerrenacimiento español (México 1950), 52. 17. Laberinto de Fortuna, ed. J. M. Blecua (Madrid 1943), st.102. 18. In this study I quote from a late fifteenth-century edition of the Coronaçión with commentary, British Museum shelfmark, G.11275. Here and in quotations from the General estoria I regularize the use of i and j, u and v. 19. ‘The Coronaçión of Juan de Mena: poem and commentary’, HR, VII (1939), 125–44. Arnold G. Reichenberger, ‘Classical Antiquity in some poems of Juan de Mena’, in Studia hispanica in honorem R. Lapesa, III (Madrid 1975), 405–18, excludes the Coronaçión from his survey. He promises a separate study of this poem. 20. M. R. Lida de Malkiel, ‘La General estoria: notas literarias y filológicas’, RPh, XII (1958–59), 111–42, and XIII (1959–60), 1–30, at XIII, 4–11. Alfonsine borrowings in other works by Mena are discussed in the same article. 21. ‘Ovid’ in this section of my article means the basic Ovidian text as found in modern editions. 22. This is, of course, the well-known brevity topos, but, as is equally well-known, the use of a topos does not prove insincerity, and there is no reason on this occasion to disbelieve Mena. 23. Bersuire and the Ovide moralisé are, as we have seen, post-Alfonsine. There is another allegorical treatise on Ovid, by Giovanni del Virgilio, which I have been unable to consult. However, since it is dated at about 1322–23, it is too late to have been a common source for Alfonso's and Mena's works, and he does not expand the Ovidian tales so that it could not alter the conclusions of this study. As to other versions of Ovid, Professor Lloyd A. Kasten informs me that the Alfonsine files in the Seminary of Medieval Spanish Studies at the University of Wisconsin reveal nothing that could be a common source for Alfonso and Mena. I am very grateful to Professor Kasten for examining the files on my behalf. For some other points on Mena's version of the Tereus story, see M. R. Lida de Malkiel, ‘La GE’, 4–5. 24. See M. R. Lida de Malkiel, Juan de Mena, 132, and ‘La GE’, 6; J. R. Chatham, ‘A thirteenth-century Spanish version of the Orpheus myth’, Romance Notes, X (1968–69), 180–85. 25. Mena too adopts a euhemeristic approach when he describes the origin of Phoebus. Euhemerism derived from the Messinian Euhemerus, who c. 300 B.C. put forward the idea that the traditional gods and goddesses had been ordinary men and women who lived and died as other mortals, but because of their outstanding qualities were deified by their contemporaries. This approach developed through the centuries and was very popular in the Middle Ages. See John Daniel Cooke, ‘Euhemerism: a medieval interpretation of classical paganism’, Speculum, II (1927), 396–410. 26. See also M. R. Lida de Malkiel, ‘La GE’, 4. 27. De Vetula is an elegiac comedy of the thirteenth century, supposed to have been found in Ovid's tomb and including many Ovidian themes on love. It was a major vehicle for the transmission of Ovidian material in the Middle Ages. See Francisco Rico, ‘Sobre el origen de la autobiografía en el Libro de Buen Amor’, AEM, IV (1967), 301–25. 28. ‘Medieval biographies of ‘Ovid’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, IX (1946,, 10–59, at p. 30 note 4. 29. Anthony Cárdenas. John Nitii and Jean Gilkison, Bibliography of Old Spanish Texts, Madison 1975;, 5–9. 30. These are nos 9–14 of the inventory published by Julián Zarco Cuevas, Catálogo de los manuscritos castellanos de la Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, III (El Escorial 1929), 453–61. 31. Joaquín Gimeno Casaíduero, ‘Castilla en Los doce triunfos del Cartujano’, HR, XXXIX (1971), 357–77. Jorge Manrique's list of Roman heroes, in stanzas 27–28 oí Coplas que fizo por la muerte de su padre, is also taken from the Estoria de España: see Ernst R. Curtius, ‘Jorge Manrique und der Kaisergedanke’, ZRPh, LII (1932), 129–52, and M. R. Lida de Malkiel, ‘Notas para la primera de las Copias de don Jorge Manrique por la muerte de su padre’, RPh, XVI (1962–63), 170–73, at p. 171. 32. Francisco Rico, ‘Aristoteles Hispanus: en torno a Gil de Zamora, Petrarca y Juan de Mena’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica, X (1967), 143–64. It is possible that Mena used a Castilian translation of De preconiis, since one was in Santillana's library and may well have been made at Santillana's request (Schiff, 421 —23). 33. M. R. Lida de Malkiel, ‘La GE’, 2–4. Santillana possessed two partial MSS of GE: Schiff, 393 and 397–98. 34. M. R. Lida de Malkiel, ‘La GE’, 2. 35. Mário Martins, ‘Fernão Lopes e as cartas de Ariadne e Dido’, in Estudos de cultura medieval, II (Braga 1972), 11–16. 36. M. R. Lida de Malkiel, ‘La GE’, 5, suggests that this is Mena's own contribution. 37. L. F. Lindley Cintra. ‘O Liber regum. fonte comum do Poema de Fernão Gonçalves e do Laberinto de Juan de Mena’, Boletim de Filologia, XIII (1952), 289–315. 38. Spanish Literary Historiography: Three Forms of Distortion (Exeter 1967), 9. 39. I should like to express my grateful thanks to Professor A. D. Deyermond for his advice and contributions which have helped me considerably in the writing of this article.
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