Diglossia

Parallel with the mythological vogue in contemporary art, late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century European literature virtually overflowed with texts based on the narrative treasurehouse of ancient mythology. After more than a millenium, poems and plays swarmed again with lascivious gods and death-defying heroes; burning desires and violent deaths; paederasty and incest; adultery, rape, and murder. With very few exceptions all the greatest authors of the day dedicated themselves to mythological pursuits, creating some of the most astonishing and significant but also hermetic works ever to have been written in the European languages. Indeed, this literary trend was both so consistent and so extensive that we may speak of a virtual early modern „mythological literature“: a wide-branched organism of generically varied literary variations on the Ovidian fables. The book Diglossia. The Early Modern Reinvention of Mythological Discourse aims to answer the basic research questions: „Why did this mythological literature arise at this particular time?“ and „What are its constants and variants?“