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Illustrations viiTables xiAcknowledgments xiiiAbbreviations and Citation Editions xixChronology of Medieval Mythographers and Commentary Authors xxv

Introduction 1

Chapter One. Toward a Subjective Mythography: Allegorical Figurae and Authorial Self-Projection 17

Chapter Two. Dante’s Self-Mythography: The Inverted Ovid “Commentary” of the Commedia (1321) and Its Family Glosses 39

I. A Preface to Dante: His Sons’ Glosses and His Medieval Commen-tary Authors (Inferno, Cantos 1–4) 47

II. Ovidian Inglossation (Inferno, Cantos 3–27) 71 III. Pilgrim Dante Metamorphosed (Inferno, Cantos 28–34) 90

Chapter Three. “Iohannes de Certaldo”: Self-Validation in Boccaccio’s “Genealogies of the Gods” (ca. 1350–75) 126

I. The Allegoria Mitologica (1332–34) of Naples: Boccaccio’s Personalized Ovid 138

II. The Genealogie Deorum Gentilium: Boccaccio’s Quest for Authority in Epic Mythography 144

III. At Certaldo: Boccaccio’s Unfinished Commentary on Dante (1373–74) 196

Chapter Four. Franco-Italian Christine de Pizan’s Epistre Othea (1399–1401): A Feminized Commentary on Ovid 206

I. Christine de Pizan Anti-Rose: Évrart de Conty and Finding a Female Voice 212

II. Righting the Rose: The Othea’s Moralized and Christianized Ovid 244

III. Othea, Minerva, and Other Mythological Women: Humanizing Ovid 258

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Chapter Five. Christine de Pizan’s Illuminated Women in the Cité des Dames (1405) 272

I. From Othea and Proba to “Je, Cristine,” Une Clere Femme 281 II. Reading Boccaccio: Learned Women, Sibyls, and

“Women Made Famous by Coincidence” 299 III. Arms and the Woman: Honorat Bovet, Jean de Meun, and

Minerva in Le Livre des Fais d’Armes et de Chevalerie (1410) 352

Chapter Six. Coluccio Salutati’s Hercules as Vir Perfectus: Justifying Seneca’s Hercules Furens in De Laboribus Herculis (1378?–1405) 363

I. Reading Senecan Tragedies: The Origins of Salutati’s De Laboribus Herculis 371

II. Aeneas’s Failed Descent into Virgil’s Underworld: The Pythagorean Y 374

III. The Influential Boethian Descents: Hercules versus Orpheus, Ulysses, and Amphiaraus 382

Chapter Seven. Cristoforo Landino’s “Judgment of Aeneas” in the Disputationes Camaldulenses (1475) 396

I. Petrarch’s Neoplatonic Aeneas, Vir Perfectus 398 II. Landino’s Medievalized Aeneas and the Three Goddesses 405

Conclusion 420

Notes 425Bibliography 539Index 613 PROOF