The Figure of Minerva in Medieval Literature by William F. Hodapp (review)

As scholarship continues to re-examine the ways ideas traversed the medieval world through literature, delving into the relationship between author and audience, William F. Hodapp's volume following the figure of Minerva from antiquity to the later Middle Ages offers critical perspectives on medieval authors' use of established imagery. Drawing on a wide range of texts from the classical world through to sixteenth-century England and Scotland, Hodapp proposes that the way medieval people engaged with antiquity in literature shows that both author and audience had an assumed understanding of classical figures. Intertextuality is central, and Hodapp asserts that 'poetics and reading practices [were] at the heart of medieval classicism' (p. 247).

The book consists of six chapters, each under the heading of a different tradition of Minerva representation which the author claims to have 'teased out' of the texts he surveys (p. 249): Minerva in antiquity, as goddess of wisdom, of liberal arts, as benefactor, idol, and as the ally of Venus. Throughout, Hodapp draws on classical texts, exploring their reception and transformation via medieval authors' works, offering in-depth readings of each, relying heavily on Ovid, and with an understandable emphasis on the English pieces, such as John Lydgate's works, wherein lies his expertise, and from which he derives some of his more interesting readings.

Framing the work is the first chapter, 'Roman Minerva and Elements of Medieval Classicism', in which the 'dynamic interaction between reading and writing' is broached (p. 12). Drawing on other media, such as the temple of Minerva in Assisi, the medieval familiarity with the classical world is elucidated. Amidst changing attitudes towards Europe's Roman past, medieval authors adapted their use of classical figures and ideas. As with Minerva and Pallas-Athena in antiquity, this synthesis of gods, ideas, cultures, and, to an extent, language, is addressed, and Minerva is seen as a unifying element. Considering passages from Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Aquinas, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, and Quintus Curtius Rufus, among others, Hodapp notes that authors in the medieval West, as well as their audience, developed historical, physical, and allegorical traditions that were independent of the Greek tradition, itself largely 'unavailable to the Latin West' (p. 43).

In the chapter 'Sapiential Tradition', Minerva as the representation of contemplative wisdom via love, presented in the Vulgate, is explored in terms of 'active redemption' and 'creative transformation' (p. 44). Hodapp investigates the relationship between love and wisdom, posing literary precedents in a survey of wide-ranging texts, including Boethius, Henry Suso, and Bernardus Silvestris, culminating in an analysis of works by John Lydgate and the sixteenth-century Gavin Douglas. The chapter 'Martianus Tradition'—Minerva as mistress of learning according to Martianus Capella—examines the medieval idea of liberal arts from Cicero's De oratore, and how it was adapted by authors such as Cassiodorus, Augustine, and Isidore of Seville, to Christian clergy. The more secular John of Salisbury and Peter Abelard are presented in contrast, and questions are addressed about Minerva's relationships with other figures in the analyses of the English 'Court of Sapience', and the role of the poet in society in Skelton's 'Garland of Laurel'.

A similar strategy is used in the following chapters, tracing traditions of Minerva as benefactor and as idol, exposing questions about readership, polemic, didacticism, poetics, and style. Hodapp's analyses of the English works offer some fresh perspectives on the use of classical figures by medieval poets. The overarching theme in the synthesis of the figure of Minerva seems always to be her relationship to other figures and representations of virtues, especially love, elaborated in the last chapter, where her relationship to Venus, in the 'Ovidian Tradition', is examined.

Hodapp has taken a broad range of literature from an extensive timeframe, which, whilst commendable in scope, leaves the reader feeling that the surface has barely been broken. What is not always clear are the conclusions drawn...