Thirty Years of the ‘Jeweled Style’*
CILLIAN O’HOGAN
J. ELSNER and J. HERNÁNDEZ LOBATO (EDS), THE POETICS OF LATE
LATIN LITERATURE. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 544, illus.
ISBN 9780199355631. £71.00.
S. MCGILL and J. PUCCI (EDS), CLASSICS RENEWED: RECEPTION AND
INNOVATION IN THE LATIN POETRY OF LATE ANTIQUITY (Bibliothek
der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften. NF 152). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag
Winter, 2016. Pp. 432, illus. ISBN 9783825364489. €48.00.
P. F. MORETTI, R. RICCI and C. TORRE (EDS), CULTURE AND LITERATURE IN
LATIN LATE ANTIQUITY: CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES (Studi
e testi tardoantichi (STTA) 13). Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Pp. 400, illus. ISBN
9782503557359. €100.00.
K. POLLMANN, THE BAPTIZED MUSE: EARLY CHRISTIAN POETRY AS
CULTURAL AUTHORITY. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 288. ISBN
9780198726487. £55.00.
M. SQUIRE and J. WIENAND (EDS), MORPHOGRAMMATA: THE LETTERED ART
OF OPTATIAN. FIGURING CULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE AGE
OF CONSTANTINE (Morphomata 33). Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2017. Pp. 530,
illus. ISBN 9783770561278. €78.00.
In seventh-century Wiltshire, a scholar-monk began to write classicising Latin poetry. In
bold terms he describes himself as the rst of the Germanic peoples to write Latin
poetry (‘neminem nostrae stirpis prosapia genitum et Germanicae gentis cunabulis
confotum in huiuscemodi negotio [i.e. poetry] ante nostram mediocritatem tantopere
desudasse’).1 His programmatic statements cite Virgil explicitly, and allude to Prudentius
and Sedulius.2 His is a poetry that sets out a stall for the beginning of something new,
but does so by making clear his predecessors. For Aldhelm, as for much of the Middle
Ages, the canonical models of Latin poetry included classical Latin authors as well as
the Christian Latin poets of Late Antiquity.
Fourteen centuries on, late antique Latin poetry may not have quite the same status as it
did for Aldhelm and his Anglo-Latin successors, but three decades after the annus mirabilis
of 1989, it is safe to say that it has nally become properly established as a subject worthy
* This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My thanks to
Jessica Blum, Michael Dewar, Andrew Faulkner, Duncan MacRae, Peter Thonemann and the readers for JRS. I
should state for full disclosure that Catherine Ware (contributor to Classics Renewed and Poetics) supervised my
undergraduate thesis, and Michael Herren (contributor to Classics Renewed) was one of my PhD examiners.
1
Ehwald 1919: 202.
2
For Aldhelm’s engagement with his predecessors see Orchard 1994: 126–224; McBrine 2017: 234–9.
JRS 109 (2019), pp. 305–314. © The Author(s) 2019.
Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.
doi:10.1017/S0075435819000480
306 CILLIAN O’HOGAN
of study in the Anglophone academy.3 Since the mid-2000s, a steady stream of
monographs dedicated to the topic, as well as increasing numbers of translations,
articles and conferences, and the establishment of the International Society for Late
Antique Literary Studies, has meant that we are in probably the most fertile and
productive period for late antique poetic studies in the English-speaking world we have
ever seen.4 It is remarkable that so much of this has taken place despite the constraints
within which scholars of late Latin poetry have to operate: proper modern critical
editions are often lacking, and most works do not have detailed scholarly commentaries.
In short, we have to do without the apparatus that scholars of republican and early
imperial literature take for granted.5
The publication of four recent edited volumes relating to late Latin poetry, along with a
single-author monograph updating and synthesising previously published essays, provides
an opportunity to examine the key trends of current scholarship in the eld.6 In what
follows, I focus in turn on four of the most prominent issues in the eld that emerge
from the ve books, namely genre, intertextuality, the ‘jeweled style’ and the nature of
‘late antique poetics’, before concluding by outlining several areas in which there is
considerable opportunity for further work to be done. More reection on the wider
contexts of late Latin poetics is needed: although Karla Pollmann speaks explicitly about
this throughout her book, in the edited volumes such overt theorising is less common.
Aside from the contributions by Marco Formisano (in both Classics Renewed and
Poetics) and Jesus Hernández Lobato (in Poetics), the clearest theoretical statements and
most ambitious pieces come from Helen Kaufmann (in Poetics), Michael Squire (in both
Poetics and Morphogrammata), Jaś Elsner and Hernández Lobato (the introduction to
Poetics) and Marc Mastrangelo (in both Classics Renewed and Poetics).
I GENRE
The range of new and modied genres that appear in late antique poetry has long been a
focus of scholarly study. Alongside the traditional genres (epic, lyric, elegy, epigram), we
nd a number of hybrid genres (Prudentius’ Peristephanon, long poems in lyric metres,
have been called ‘ballads’; the elegiac metre is reused for a range of purposes; the rise of
the Christian hymn throws things further out of sync). This ‘mélange des genres’ has
governed approaches to late antique genre for decades.7 Is biblical epic, for example,
something that differs palpably from classical epic?8 What about panegyrical poetry: is
it a subset of epic, or something wholly new?9 Shorter epics like the Psychomachia and
the Romulea of Dracontius have been called epyllia, but is this term, already
controversial when applied to Hellenistic and earlier Latin texts, really transferrable to
3
1989 saw the publication of three landmark monographs in English: Malamud 1989; Palmer 1989; Roberts
1989, as well as the rst volume of a new literary history of Latin, dealing with the period 284–374 C.E.:
Herzog and Schmidt 1989.
4
There has always been a great deal of attention paid to late Latin poetry by continental scholars, and a number
of Anglophone academics have long been working diligently to promote the eld.
5
There are some promising signs, however: the past few years have seen new critical editions of Paulinus of Nola
(Dolveck 2015) and Dracontius (Zwierlein 2017). Landmark commentaries on late Latin poetry include Green
1991, Dewar 1996, Fux 2003 and 2013, Kaufmann 2006, as well as the commentaries in progress on the
poetry of Sidonius Apollinaris.
6
The books follow a cluster of ambitious monographs dealing with the nature of late Latin poetics: Hernández
Lobato 2012; Pelttari 2014; Cullhed 2015.
7
For the term see especially Fontaine 1975 and 1988.
8
See Putter 2018. McBrine 2017 is comprehensive but less strong on genre; Kuhn-Treichel 2016 sees the
marginal work of Marius Victor as comprising a hybrid of epic and didactic.
9
Ware 2012.
REVIEW ARTICLE 307
the late antique context?10 The current tendency, in keeping with wider trends in the
criticism of late Latin poetry (to be discussed later), is to stress continuity with the
classical past where possible. So, for instance, Scott McGill (in Classics Renewed)
foregrounds Juvencus’ epic aspects and stresses that Juvencus sees himself as operating
in a continuing tradition of classical epic, similar to Catherine Ware’s reading of
Claudian’s hexameter poetry as being primarily epic in nature.11 Even where
contributors identify generic polyphony, they tend to describe it in terms that are
classicising: Ware (in Classics Renewed) and Stephen Harrison (in Poetics) both
approach Claudian’s prefaces (to De VI consulatu Honorii and De raptu Proserpinae
respectively) from a perspective that shares ground with Harrison’s work on ‘generic
enrichment’ in the Augustan poets.12
This stress on continuity is all well and good, but it runs the risk of collapsing the
temporal distance between the poets of Late Antiquity and their earlier models.13 Late
antique authors, especially after the rst generation, not only allude to their republican
and imperial models, but also to their own late antique predecessors — something that
is not always sufciently acknowledged in these papers. To take one example, Eric
Hutchinson’s study of Sedulius’ interaction with Virgil (in Classics Renewed) does not
engage in any signicant way (aside from a couple of footnotes) with the presence of
Juvencus, Sedulius’ biblical epic predecessor. Each poet operating in a tradition restates
the terms for their successors. The few papers in these collections that do attempt to
follow a tradition through Late Antiquity stand out for their scarcity: most notably, two
contributions on the fortunes of elegy in Late Antiquity by Michele Cutino (in Culture
and Literature) and Michael Roberts (in Classics Renewed). One way forward may be
that outlined by Ad Putter in a recent study on biblical poetry (not exclusively epic),
who foregrounds the rules of the game rather than more rigid generic schemata.14
When used with caution, however, rigid generic schemata can be productive. In a
chapter on ‘The Test Case of Epic Poetry in Late Antiquity’ (37–75), Pollmann identies
ve different types of epic (‘not necessarily exhaustive’, 40): mythological, panegyrical,
allegorical, biblical and hagiographical. In her view, it is possible to identify
characteristics that help us to distinguish between variants of epic, even if these
characteristics can sometimes overlap subgenres. This examination of genre is exemplary
of Pollmann’s approach throughout the volume, which tends towards the typological.
Typologies inevitably invite nit-picking and counter-arguments (for example, the
arguments on 45–6 against seeing Claudian’s De bello Gildonico as a historical epic are
in my view unconvincing),15 but Pollmann has provided an apparatus for approaching
late Latin hexameter poetry, and shows us how genres are at the very least ‘good to
think with’ (21–3). Broader statements about the uidity of genre in Late Antiquity sit
alongside focused investigations of individual generic strands. The next step is to explore
whether these subcategories exist in their own traditions: should we be speaking of the
panegyrical successors of Claudian (Merobaudes, Sidonius, Corippus), or the allegorical
successors of Prudentius (though these are mostly medieval, e.g. Milo of Saint-Amand’s
De sobrietate or Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus)?16
10
For the terminology see Bright 1987; Wasyl 2011.
11
Ware 2012.
12
Harrison 2007; see also Ian Fielding’s study of generic interlopers in Maximianus (in Classics Renewed).
13
I think here of the infamous claim at Cairns 1972: 32 that genre in antiquity existed in a ‘time-free zone’ — but
in fact Cairns’ conception of genre might be a very productive way to analyse late Latin poetry.
14
Putter 2018.
15
One example: Pollmann argues that Claudian’s use of the divine apparatus is not in keeping with Lucan’s
practice, but as she notes in a footnote (46 n. 45), Silius and Petronius do involve the gods — as does Ennius.
Can we really say, then, that historical epic ought to exclude the divine?
16
There are decades’ worth of dissertations to be done on the medieval reception of Prudentius: the survey of Vest
1932 (frequently cited but apparently rarely read) merely maps the terrain.
308 CILLIAN O’HOGAN
Part of the problem with making sense of this is that traditions get messier in Late
Antiquity.17 Poets continue to signal their indebtedness to specic generic models, but
they often do so while also veering far away from these same models. Perhaps the best
example is the marvellous pastoral dialogue De mortibus boum by Severus Sanctus
Endelechius. As Petra Schierl shows in her detailed analysis (in Classics Renewed),
Endelechius ‘recasts’ Virgilian bucolic for Christian purposes and combines both
Eclogues and Georgics to produce a new type of pastoral poem, one that also draws on
the traditions of Horatian lyric and the nascent genre of Christian hymnography.
Endelechius makes his debt to Virgil clear (the herdsmen are called Aegon, Bucolus and
Tityrus), but the transformation into a lyric setting (with thirty-three stanzas, one for
each year of Christ’s life) also marks a break with the classical tradition and a shift
towards biblical traditions (the shepherd David as composer of psalms, Jesus as Good
Shepherd and so on).
II INTERTEXTUALITY
Genre and traditions become more slippery in the fourth and fth centuries. One
tried-and-tested way to nd one’s footing is by relying on philologically-founded
intertextual criticism. How does the way in which authors choose to allude reect how
they perceive their place in a tradition? Intertextual criticism, which has become the
dominant (default?) method of criticism in the study of Latin poetry over the past two
decades, is well represented in these collections. This has often been done uncritically,
and resulted in somewhat unimaginative applications of the methodologies of Hinds and
Thomas to late antique poetry.18 We ought to question, as Formisano does (Poetics,
207–8), the extent to which the critical tools developed by scholars of Augustan and
imperial Latin poetry (works primarily written in or near Rome and within a relatively
short span of time between the middle of the rst century B.C.E. and the end of the rst
century C.E.) are really applicable to literature written across the Roman Empire over a
span of three centuries. For Formisano, this approach perpetuates the notion that late
antique literature is merely an appendage to classical Latin literature, rather than a
vibrant and ourishing body of work in its own right. I would add that such an
approach often ends up painting the rich palette of late Latin poetry into a shade of grey.
Earlier generations of scholars wrestled with the question of how, exactly, to interpret
Christian Latin imitation of Virgil (above all): is it Kontrastimitation (a specically
Christian version of oppositio in imitando), chresis (utilitarian deployment of classical
literature geared towards praise of God), or something else?19 As Mastrangelo notes,
these formative efforts ‘established the special character of Late Latin reuse’ (Classics
Renewed, 32). In addition to Mastrangelo’s contribution to Classics Renewed, we have
Kaufmann’s take on intertextuality in Poetics, as well as Aaron Pelttari’s work on
allusion in his important 2014 monograph.20 All three focus in particular on the new
late antique phenomenon of widespread ‘nonreferential allusion’ (i.e. allusions that make
no specic claims about the relationship between the contexts of alluding and alluded
17
This is especially true of lyric poetry and poetry collections, as shown by Joseph Pucci in his study of Ausonius’
Bissula (in Classics Renewed) and by Vincent Zarini in his study of Ennodius (in Culture and Literature).
18
Hinds 1998; Thomas 1999. The argument about whether to call it ‘allusion’ or ‘intertextuality’ apparently still
lives: see the comments of Hutchinson (in Classics Renewed, 273–4) and Kaufmann (in Poetics, 150). The words
we use do of course matter, but I would be surprised if many Latinists still have very strong feelings about a
terminology debate from the Latin theory wars of the 1990s.
19
For Kontrastimitation see Thraede 1962; for chresis see Gnilka 1984; a good summary is provided by
Mastrangelo in Classics Renewed.
20
Mastrangelo responds to both Kaufmann and Pelttari, and is a useful entry-point to the debate.
REVIEW ARTICLE 309
texts), sometimes also called ‘formal’ or ‘unmarked’ allusions.21 Yet each looks at these
features in different ways. For Pelttari, they help to show how much more space late
Latin poets make for readers to interpret their works, while Kaufmann maps them onto
one extreme of an intertextual continuum, seeing them as ‘formal features’ (159) used
by authors to add classical avour to late antique texts. Mastrangelo, rather than
stressing the role of the reader or the author, reminds us of the wider contexts of both:
placement within a literary tradition, and interpretability by a scholarly community. The
centrality of exegesis and the importance of interpretation ad litteram must also shape
how we think about intertextuality, especially with regard to Christian literature. As
Isabella Gualandri emphasises (in Poetics), attention to individual words is heightened in
the fourth and fth centuries. It is hard to see how Christian readers of late Latin
poetry, so primed towards close reading of every single word of the Bible, would be able
to avoid following up the references produced by allusion in these poems. Ultimately, as
McGill puts it, the late Latin author directs the reader back to the classical source in
order ‘to activate the content of the source text and to compare and contrast it with the
content of the later text’ (Classics Renewed, 65).
Even if I am not convinced by Pelttari and Kaufmann’s treatment of ‘nonreferential
allusions’, it is heartening that they (along with Mastrangelo and Gualandri) are making
clear efforts to articulate what it is that distinguishes late Latin imitation from Augustan
and imperial practice. The contributions in the volumes under review may not always
acknowledge that sufciently, but the more theoretical approaches to intertextuality
developed by these four authors will have to be the starting-point for all future work on
imitation in late Latin poetry.
III THE JEWELED STYLE
The attention to individual words that characterises late antique intertextual studies can
also be seen in a related feature of late Latin poetry, namely the parallels between late
antique literature and late antique art. This cultural comparison was pioneered by
Michael Roberts’ The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (1989), which
saw clear links in creative approaches taken by the poets and plastic artists of Late
Antiquity, especially a tendency towards fragmentation and miniaturisation, an emphasis
on the visually appealing, and the isolation of ‘independent units’ (words, stones) within
larger works of art. Although Roberts was guarded about the wider applicability of his
work (6–7), it has nevertheless shaped a great deal of the Anglophone scholarship on
late Latin poetry over the past three decades. The fundamental question of the
relationship between art and text continues to appeal: intertextuality (especially in
relation to the cento and to Optatian) has been likened to the use of spolia in late
antique monuments (Mastrangelo in Classics Renewed, 36–7; Squire in Poetics, 24;
though the analogy has long been noted, see Roberts 1989: 97, with further references).
While such interactions between art and literature are not uncommon in antiquity (or in
other historical periods), it is nevertheless true that the artistic (or ‘jeweled’) nature of late
Latin poetry speaks to something more than simply a shared cultural origin. The
appearance of an edited volume devoted to the poems of Publius Optatianus Porfyrius
foregrounds this play between art and text. As Michael Squire puts it (Poetics, 28),
Optatian ‘makes sense only in the context of late antique visual culture’. Optatian’s
word art takes the form both of imagines metrorum (poems in the shape of the objects
they are about) and carmina cancellata (gridded poems, laid out in squares, that hide
21
For the term see Pelttari 2014: 130–7.
310 CILLIAN O’HOGAN
additional words and verses in shapes within the grids). Optatian’s poetry is meant to be
read (on the page, rst and foremost),22 but it is also meant to be looked at.23
Optatian draws on a long tradition of play between seeing and reading (as Squire notes
in Poetics, 43–6). In a famous passage, Paulinus of Nola apparently uses the word relegere
to refer to the act of viewing images on the wall of his basilica (Carm. 27.586): he notes
that tituli in verse are inscribed next to the images, to tell the viewers what they are
looking at. These tituli (the most prominent extant example of which is Prudentius’
Dittochaeon) are described by Francesco Lubian as ‘examples of notional ekphrasis’
(Culture and Literature, 57), ‘notional’ because it is impossible to know whether or not
they really did accompany the works they describe. Whatever the real purpose of the
tituli, they at least purport to be public-facing poetry, that is, poetry written for a large
community. Another example of such public-facing poetry is the large range of metrical
inscriptions produced in the fourth century. Dennis Trout (in Classics Renewed) places
epigraphic poetry in its spatial contexts, by looking at the relationship between several
poems written by or for members of the Constantinian imperial family and preserved on
monuments. These poems interact with one another, making the landscape of Rome
into a map of words.
At the same time as words are made into works of art, their limits as means to
description become increasingly apparent. Late antique authors repeatedly refer to the
impossibility of describing things accurately in human speech. This is seen most
prominently in the difculties Christian authors have in talking about God (Prudentius
uses terms such as elinguis and mutus), but it is expressed also (albeit in somewhat
cliched terms) by the writers of panegyric.24 Hernández Lobato identies this as a
‘poetics of silence’ (Poetics). This is perhaps not quite the right term, given how much
poets talk explicitly about the difculties they have in using language to describe that
which is beyond language (be it God or the Emperor). A more appealing approach is
taken by Mastrangelo (in Poetics), who sees Prudentius and Boethius as honestly
acknowledging the limits of corporeal language and working within these constraints to
describe as best they can, not least by using tools such as metaphor, allegory, ekphrasis
and allusion.
IV PERIODISATION AND THE LIMITS OF ‘ LATE LATIN POETRY ’
The volumes under review focus overwhelmingly on the literature of the fourth and fth
centuries, with a few stand-outs from the sixth century, and little beyond that. How do
we dene late antique Latin poetry, and how should it be related (if at all) to the
parameters of late antique history or art? Inevitably, any attempt to set hard dates is
likely to be futile.25 It is instructive, however, to see explicit attempts at dening an
endpoint (the relative absence of poetry in the third century makes dening a
starting-point much easier). So, for instance, McGill and Pucci (Poetics, 14) set the
chronological limits for their book as the fourth to sixth centuries (although both
Roberts and David Bright extend down to the Carolingian era). Kaufmann identies ‘a
clear endpoint to late Latin intertextuality’ (Poetics, 173) in Venantius Fortunatus, who
is probably the most popular contender, nowadays, for the title of last Latin poet of
22
This raises the issue of silent reading, for which see most recently McCutcheon 2015.
23
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe (in Morphogrammata) makes explicit the ‘jeweled style’ link, by comparing Optatian’s
poems to late antique amulets and gemstones.
24
For Prudentius see Gerard O’Daly (Classics Renewed, 236–9), also Malamud 2011 and Dykes 2011. For
panegyric see Ware (Poetics, 362–3).
25
See the review article of Shanzer 2009.
REVIEW ARTICLE 311
antiquity. I will return later to my own quibbles with such limits. What is important to
note, however, is that to all intents and purposes late antique Latin poetry is usually
dened according to the criteria of fourth- and fth-century texts. This results in two issues.
First, this approach prioritises literature written while the Western Roman Empire was
still standing, and runs into difculties when dealing with poetry written under Burgundian
or Visigothic rule (Fortunatus, Dracontius, Boethius). Second, it inadvertently perpetuates
the notion that late antique literature is a terminus (the ‘end of ancient poetry’), not least
through smoothing the way for the relatively uncritical adaptation of tools developed by
authors working on Augustan and imperial Latin poetry to the contexts of Late
Antiquity. (This approach has been criticised repeatedly by Formisano.)26 The
classicising approach to Late Antiquity also means that the dramatic inuence this
poetry went on to have on the literature of the Middle Ages (especially the following
centuries) is overlooked; there are hardly any attempts to trace the development of
traditions from Late Antiquity through to the high Middle Ages in the volumes under
review.27
On the one hand, it is reasonable to approach fourth- and fth-century literature from
the perspective of classical poetry. After all, Prudentius, Claudian and Sidonius all
considered themselves Romans and inheritors of the Roman literary tradition. On the
other hand, this means that the innovations of these authors, and the ways in which
they modify the classical tradition and set the terms for their own successors, are not
fully acknowledged. As Elsner and Hernández Lobato remark in the introduction to
their volume, it is late antique literature that establishes the model for how to negotiate
the competing demands of classical and Christian traditions for authors throughout the
Middle Ages and beyond.28
In an effort to make sense of the poetics of late antique literature, a number of scholars
reach for later parallels, or think about reception (beyond the Middle Ages). This approach
was pioneered by Georgia Nugent almost three decades ago, and is exemplied in the
volumes under review in the article by Hernández Lobato (in Morphogrammata), as
well as (briey) by Kaufmann (in Poetics).29 While some of these approaches are
illuminating (it is remarkable just how much some authors of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century reached for late antique texts), ultimately it can come across as
yet another apologia for late antique literature, and I am not sure how much we gain
from the broad brush-stroke claims for similarity between the two periods. A more
productive reception-oriented approach may be to think about how reading late antique
texts shapes how readers approach their classical models. As reception theory has taught
us, once we have read Anne Carson, we will always read Sophocles or Sappho with her
in mind.30 Philip Hardie has recently tried a similar experiment by asking how
Prudentian the Aeneid is.31 And for Aldhelm and other early medieval authors, as I
mentioned at the beginning, Virgil has to be read through the intermediary of
Prudentius and Sedulius.
26
See especially Formisano 2007, 2012 and 2014, and his contribution to Poetics.
27
Roberts’ analysis of the elegiac tradition in Poetics is a notable exception. Bright in the same volume is
primarily interested in Hrabanus Maurus, rather than his late antique predecessors; Pollmann deals with
traditions in a couple of chapters, but does not always do enough to spell out the relationship between authors
working in those traditions.
28
A point also made, with regard to prose literature, by Vessey 2014 and 2015.
29
See Nugent 1989; see also the various reception-themed contributions to Formisano and Fuhrer 2014 and
Schottenius Cullhed and Malm 2018.
30
Still essential is Martindale 1993.
31
Hardie 2017.
312 CILLIAN O’HOGAN
V FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Thinking about the early medieval reception of late antique poetry invites a much messier
question: where do we draw the boundary between ‘late antique’ and ‘early medieval’
poetry? Any efforts to pick a date will be frustrated. Picking Venantius Fortunatus (d. c.
600/609) as the endpoint, as many instinctively will, raises the question of whether the
rhythmical poetry attributed to Columba (d. 597) should also be considered ‘late
antique’ rather than ‘medieval’ — and does it exclude the metrical poetry of Visigothic
poets like Eugenius of Toledo (d. 657)? If we are going to allow Visigothic poetry, why
not the earliest Anglo-Latin poetry of Aldhelm (linked to the ‘ending of Late Antiquity’
by one recent monograph)?32 But Aldhelm intitiates a strong tradition of Anglo-Latin
poetry that culminates in Alcuin — should this be included? And if Alcuin, why not the
rest of Carolingian poetry? My point is not that we should move from thinking about
‘late antique poetry’ to thinking about ‘poetry of the rst millennium’ (though it is
tempting), but rather that late antique poetry shares as much with poetry of the tenth
century as it does with poetry of the rst: by adopting a primarily classicising
perspective, we are only telling half the story.33
Expanding the chronological range examined by scholars of Late Antiquity is one
logical next step. Another is to engage more with scholarship on the other poetic
traditions of Late Antiquity. Despite the common perception that late antique Greek and
Latin literature went down divergent paths, there are clear points of crossover: for
example, Claudian’s origins among the ‘wandering poets’ of late antique Greek Egypt,
as well as the ways in which Maximianus’ use of Philodemus can be paralleled in
sixth-century Greek poetry (as shown by Fielding in Classics Renewed). Yet even in
instances where direct links cannot be established, it would surely be productive to trace
parallel trends between Latin and Greek poetry (not to mention poetry written in Syriac,
Hebrew, Arabic and other late antique languages).34 Some tentative steps in this
direction have been taken at a number of recent conferences exploring Latin and Greek
poetry in dialogue (at Ghent in 2016, Wuppertal in 2019 and, looking also at Syriac,
Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic, at Waterloo in 2018).35 But there is a great deal more
to be done in this regard.
Finally, it would be good to see greater consideration of late Latin prose in relation to
late Latin poetry. Although there is a great deal of discussion of prose in Culture and
Literature, the chapters that deal with prose authors do not have very much to say
about poetry. The two studies of the Panegyrici Latini by Ware and Roger Rees in
Poetics are more successful at showing the links between prose panegyric and poetry,
while Pollmann looks at how two specic prose source-texts (Eucherius of Lyon, 120–
39, and Sulpicius Severus, 191–214) are versied by authors working at different
periods across Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. These are exceptions, however,
and because of the tendency to focus on intertextuality and on late Latin poetry in
relation to Augustan and imperial predecessors, relatively few contributions respond to
the important work of Mastrangelo on the changing fortunes of poetry in Late
Antiquity (with the exception of Pollmann, given her focus on poetic authority).36
The range of approaches covered in the volumes under review is remarkable, and has
forced me to make some difcult choices. I have not had a chance to write, for example,
32
Dempsey 2015.
33
For ‘rst millennium studies’, see Fowden 2014.
34
For example, Pollmann notes (74) the need for further study of Greek and Latin epic in tandem.
35
I was one of the organisers of the Waterloo conference.
36
Mastrangelo 2009; see also Vessey 2007. The tireless group of scholars working on Sidonius Apollinaris also
necessarily deal with the interaction between prose and verse, given that author’s output. See for example, van
Waarden and Kelly 2013.
REVIEW ARTICLE 313
about the critical role exegesis plays in late Latin (especially Christian) poetry, something
discussed especially by Mastrangelo (in both Poetics and Classics Renewed) and
Pollmann.37 And I have only touched briey on the question of literary materiality and
the ‘matter of the page’, something that recurs repeatedly in the contributions to
Morphogrammata.38 Finally, apologiae for the study of late Latin poetry abound in
these volumes.39 A plea for these to disappear in the 2020s: the books under review
make clear the value and appeal of late Latin poetry, as well as the opportunities for
more work yet to be done.
University of Toronto
[email protected]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bright, D. F. 1987: The Miniature Epic in Vandal Africa, Norman, OK.
Butler, S. 2011: The Matter of the Page: Essays in Search of Ancient and Medieval Authors, Madison,
WI.
Cairns, F. 1972: Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry, Edinburgh.
Cullhed, A. 2015: The Shadow of Creusa: Negotiating Fictionality in Late Antique Latin Literature,
Berlin.
Dempsey, G. T. 2015: Aldhelm of Malmesbury and the Ending of Late Antiquity, Turnhout.
Dewar, M. J. 1996: Claudian: Panegyricus de Sexto Consulatu Honorii Augusti, Oxford.
Dolveck, F. 2015: Paulinus Nolanus: Carmina, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, Turnhout.
Dykes, A. 2011: Reading Sin in the World: the Hamartigenia of Prudentius and the Vocation of the
Responsible Reader, Cambridge.
Ehwald, R. 1919: Aldhelmi Opera, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Berlin.
Fielding, I. 2014: ‘Elegiac memorial and the martyr as medium in Prudentius’ Peristephanon’,
Classical Quarterly 64, 808–20.
Fontaine, J. 1975: ‘Le mélange des genres dans la poésie de Prudence’, in Forma Futuri. Studi in onore
del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino, Turin, 755–77.
Fontaine, J. 1988: ‘Comment doit-on appliquer la notion de genre littéraire à la littérature latine
chrétienne du IVe siècle?’, Philologus 132, 53–73.
Formisano, M. 2007: ‘Towards an aesthetic paradigm of Late Antiquity’, Antiquité Tardive 15,
277–84.
Formisano, M. 2012: ‘Late Antiquity, new departures’, in R. Hexter and D. Townsend (eds), The
Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, Oxford, 509–34.
Formisano, M. 2014: ‘Reading décadence – reception and the subaltern Late Antiquity’, in
Formisano and Fuhrer 2014, 7–16.
Formisano, M., and Fuhrer, T. (eds) 2014: Décadence: ‘Decline and Fall’ or ‘Other Antiquity’?
Heidelberg.
Fowden, G. 2014: Before and After Muhammad: the First Millennium Refocused, Princeton.
Fux, P.-Y. 2003: Les sept passions de Prudence (Peristephanon 2.5.9. 11–14). Introduction générale
et commentaire, Fribourg.
Fux, P.-Y. 2013: Prudence et les martyrs. Hymnes et tragédie: Peristephanon 1, 3–4, 6–8, 10:
commentaire, Fribourg
Gnilka, C. 1984: Chrêsis. Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der antiken Kultur, 2 vols,
Basel.
Green, R. P. H. 1991: The Works of Ausonius, Oxford.
Hardie, P. R. 2017: ‘How Prudentian is the Aeneid?’, Dictynna 14, np.
Harrison, S. J. 2007: Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace, Oxford.
37
See further the edited collection Otten and Pollmann 2007.
38
The term is taken from Butler 2011; for more on literary materiality in Late Antiquity, see Ross 1995; Fielding
2014; O’Hogan 2016.
39
See for example, Pollmann (1); the introduction of Poetics (3–4); Bret Mulligan (in Classics Renewed, 133–4).
314 CILLIAN O’HOGAN
Hernández Lobato, J. 2012: Vel Apolline muto. Estética y poética de la Antigüedad tardía, Bern.
Herzog, R., and Schmidt, P. L. (eds) 1989: Restauration und Erneuerung. Die lateinische Literatur
von 284 bis 374 n.Chr., Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike, V, Munich.
Hinds, S. 1998: Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry, Cambridge.
Kaufmann, H. 2006: Dracontius, Romul. 10 (Medea), Heidelberg.
Kuhn-Treichel, T. 2016: Die ‘Alethia’ des Claudius Marius Victorius. Bibeldichtung zwischen Epos
und Lehrgedicht, Berlin.
Malamud, M. A. 1989: A Poetics of Transformation: Prudentius and Classical Mythology, Ithaca,
NY.
Malamud, M. A. 2011: The Origin of Sin: An English Translation of the Hamartigenia, Ithaca, NY.
Martindale, C. 1993: Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception,
Cambridge.
Mastrangelo, M. 2009: ‘The decline of poetry in the fourth-century West’, International Journal of
the Classical Tradition 16, 311–29.
McBrine, P. 2017: Biblical Epics in Late Antiquity and Anglo-Saxon England, Toronto.
McCutcheon, R. W. 2015: ‘Silent reading in antiquity and the future history of the book’, Book
History 18, 1–32.
Nugent, S. G. 1989: ‘Ausonius’ “late-antique” poetics and “post-modern” literary theory’, Ramus
19, 26–50.
O’Hogan, C. 2016: Prudentius and the Landscapes of Late Antiquity, Oxford.
Orchard, A. 1994: The Poetic Art of Aldhelm, Cambridge.
Otten, W., and Pollmann, K. (eds) 2007: Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity: The
Encounter Between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation, Leiden.
Palmer, A.-M. 1989: Prudentius on the Martyrs, Oxford.
Pelttari, A. 2014: The Space that Remains: Reading Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity, Ithaca, NY.
Putter, A. 2018: ‘Versications of the book of Jonah: late antique to late medieval’, in Schottenius
Cullhed and Malm 2018, 183–203.
Roberts, M. 1989: The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity, Ithaca, NY.
Ross, J. 1995: ‘Dynamic writing and martyrs’ bodies in Prudentius’ Peristephanon’, Journal of Early
Christian Studies 3, 325–55.
Schottenius Cullhed, S., and Malm, M. (eds) 2018: Reading Late Antiquity, Heidelberg.
Shanzer, D. 2009: ‘Literature, history, periodization, and the pleasures of the Latin literary history of
Late Antiquity’, History Compass 7, 917–54.
Thomas, R. F. 1999: Reading Virgil and his Texts: Studies in Intertextuality, Ann Arbor.
Thraede, K. 1962: ‘Epos’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum V, Stuttgart, 983–1042
Vessey, M. 2007: ‘Quid facit cum Horatio Hieronymus? Christian Latin poetry and scriptural
poetics’, in Otten and Pollmann 2007, 29–48.
Vessey, M. 2014: ‘Literary history: a fourth-century invention?’, in L. Van Hoof and P. Van Nuffelen
(eds), Literature and Society in the Fourth Century AD, Leiden, 16–30.
Vessey, M. 2015: ‘Literature, histories, Latin Late Antiquity: the state of a question’, in J. Stenger
(ed.), Spätantike Konzeptionen von Literatur, Heidelberg, 19–31.
Vest, E. B. 1932: Prudentius in the Middle Ages, unpub. PhD thesis, Harvard University.
van Waarden, J. A., and Kelly, G. (eds) 2013: New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris, Leuven.
Ware, C. 2012: Claudian and the Roman Epic Tradition, Cambridge.
Wasyl, A. M. 2011: Genres Rediscovered, Kraków.
Zwierlein, O. 2017: Blossius Aemilius Dracontius: Carmina Profana, Bibliotheca Scriptorum
Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana, Berlin.
