Ovidius historizatus. Poetisches Wissen in Walsinghams Archana deorum

Abstract

Though written in an intense dialogue with the medieval mythographic tradition, Walsingham’s Archana deorum open up a new approach to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is profoundly different from older commentaries like Bersuire’s Ovidius moralizatus. Walsingham treats the carmen perpetuum not as an allegorical prefiguration of Christian beliefs, but as a source of pagan wisdom. However, despite striking similarities, Walsingham was influenced neither by Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum nor by any other humanist source. Rather, the Archana deorum are the response of a conservative church man to a fervent anti-classicism in England, whose most outspoken proponent was John Wyclif. The paper will outline how Walsingham renarrates and reinterpretes ovidian mythology in order to deal with this challenge.

Keywords: Walsingham, St Albans, Ovid, Mythography, Classicism, Wyclif