Mythological Manuals from 1500 to 1800

Research project P 13558 Mythological manuals from 1500 to 1800 Christine HARRAUER 28.06.1999 It is the aim of this project, to investigate mythological handbooks as well as mythological manuals and compilations, which were published between `500 and `800 A.D., to find out their development, intention, and currents of thought, to analyze their structure, to describe their typical features, and to reveal their relation to other mythologies. Another point of attention is to show (if possible), how scholars, writers, and artists made use of them.

It was the aim of this project to point out lines of tradition of the ancient myth by way of examples which developed on the basis of mythological manuals written from the 16th to the 19th centuries. First of all the standard manual-editions, the `Genealogie deorum gentilium` of Giovanni Boccaccio as well as the first scientific manual of myth in modern times, Lilius Gregorius Gyraldus` `De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia` (1548), were digitized and made accessible world-wide as pdf-file on the homepage of the Commission for Ancient Literature and Latin Tradition of the Austrian Academy of Sciences: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/mythos As a support for understanding the complex principles Gyraldus followed in the composition of his work - which was still used in the 19th century by the famous Benjamin Hederich in his manual, but now is mostly neglected in modern research -, a commentary by K. Zelen on a piece of Gyraldus (`Die Göttin Hekate in den Historiae deorum gentilium des Lilius Gregorius Gyraldus unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Rezeption Hekates in humanistischen Handbüchern und Kommentaren des 16. Jahrhunderts`, dipl. thesis Vienna 1999) was placed on the web-site mentioned before. There is also a comprehensive on-line bibliography of literary works which take up and/or work on antique myth, deal with it theoretically or create even new myths following the models of antiquity (period: approx. 1400 to the middle of the 19th century; at present: 168pp.). The investigation of the tradition of [Ps.]Apollodorus `Bibliotheke`, the most important manual of myth in antiquity (1 st / 2nd cent. A.D.), resulted in two substantial facts: In the first phase, the endeavour to emendate the corrupted text reflect the humanists` enormous knowledge of ancient literature and their readiness to dispute; a second phase (17 th cent.) shows the urgent need for interpretation of the myths collected by Apollodorus as well as the question about the nature of myth. - The allegorical interpretation of myth in modern times was a further focus of the project. Its use was shown at two lines of development: on the one hand at the philosophical (esp. Platonic) line of the view of `Eros` from the time of Marsilio Ficino up to Hölderlin, on the other hand at the reception of the myth about the love of Ixion for Hera, the queen of the gods, and his deception by a cloud; examples have demonstrated that the authors and artists of modern times in each case selected individual aspects of this myth obviously in correspondence with the emphasis placed by contemporary manuals. Finally in German literature from the middle of the 18th cent. onwards Ixion was linked with the most problematic figure of that time, the so-called `Schwärmer`, and so became a symbol of enthusiasm (`Schwärmertum`) contrary to the principles of rationalism.