Introduction

Abstract

The wealth of classical mythology inherited and enthusiastically explored by writers and thinkers in the early modern period provides a store of narratives to be retold, combined, and modified through intertextual representation and allusion. Particular myths possess a cultural afterlife which far outreaches both their oral and textual origins, resurfacing repeatedly in western European culture, visual art, and literature. Such an afterlife is formed and reformed in each ‘telling’; whilst narrative structure tends to remain intact, the emphasis of the story often shifts, depending on the historical and cultural circumstance of its reproduction. In this way, the ‘afterlife’ of mythology has multiple repercussions; nuanced reproduction informs future readers of culturally specific significant aspects and the most popular mythologies rehearsed by a culture inform us that these stories resonated particularly within that reproducing culture. Additionally, it is evident that such mythology was common intellectual property, at least amongst the educated minority. Understanding, explicating, recreating, and tailoring classical myth became a major concern of educated western Europe for almost five hundred years. Particularly evident is the extent to which early modern writers selectively re-imagined mythology through patterns of omission and emphasis, together with the combination of select parts from chosen myths.

Now when thou readst of God or man, in stone, in beast, or tree

It is a myrrour for thy self thyne owne estate to see.¹