Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T07:57:04.577Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Reader and the Resurrection in Prudentius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2019

Aaron Pelttari
Aaron Pelttari*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
aaron.pelttari@ed.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Prudentius, the bodily resurrection becomes a figure for poetic immortality. Just as the author believes that his God will one day raise him from the dead, he expects and invokes a Christian reader to authenticate and authorise the fragile verbal records of a poetry that is insistently human and fallen. In other words, Prudentius’ metapoetics are perfectly in sync with his theology. After (I) presenting Prudentius’ transformation at the end of his Praefatio and setting out the terms and scope of the argument, this article (II) shows how the author puts himself at the mercy of his readers and patrons in the Peristefanon poems and then (III) considers the body and the resurrection in the Liber Cathemerinon. A short section (IV) on fictionality and belief opens up the argument, and a conclusion (V) advances it through a reading of the end of De opusculis suis. This metapoetic reading of Prudentius reveals that the author's hopes for an afterlife are expressed in and through the creative imagining of poetic and fictional scenes.

Keywords

PrudentiusLatin literatureLate AntiquityChristian poetryreceptionfiction
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 109 , November 2019 , pp. 205 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

My thanks to Scott McGill for inviting me to write a paper about the Christian poetry of Late Antiquity, which I presented at a conference he organised in Houston back in 2011. After that earliest draft, this paper was revised in stages and presented at Cornell, Santa Barbara, Edinburgh and Salamanca. In addition to the critical guidance offered at each gathering, I am grateful for feedback from friends including Suzanne Abrams Rebillard and James Uden. Many thanks to the editor and anonymous readers for JRS for their direction and criticisms. All mistakes remain my own.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrams Rebillard, S. 2015: ‘“The dead with me”: Ausonius's Parentalia as memorial to the poet’, Arethusa 48, 219–51.10.1353/are.2015.0013Google Scholar
Armisen-Marchetti, M. 2001–3: Macrobe. Commentaire au Songe de Scipion (2 vols), Paris.Google Scholar
Ballengee, J. R. 2009: The Wound and the Witness: The Rhetoric of Torture, Albany, NY.Google Scholar
Barthes, R. 1967: ‘The death of the author’, Aspen 5 + 6, item 3.Google Scholar
Bastiaensen, A. A. 1993: ‘Prudentius in recent literary criticism’, in den Boeft, J. and Hilhorst, A. (eds), Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays, Vigiliae Christianae Supplements 22, Leiden, 101–34.Google Scholar
Becker, M. 2006: Kommentar zum Tischgebet des Prudentius (cath. 3), Heidelberg.Google Scholar
Bergman, J. 1908: De codicum Prudentianorum generibus et uirtute, Vienna.Google Scholar
Bergman, J. 1926: Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina, CSEL 61, Vienna.Google Scholar
Bradshaw, A. 2002: ‘Horace's birthday and deathday’, in Woodman, T. and Feeney, D. (eds), Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace, Cambridge, 1–16.Google Scholar
Buchheit, V. 1986: ‘Resurrectio carnis bei Prudentius’, Vigiliae Christianae 40, 261–85.10.1163/157007286X00112Google Scholar
Callu, J.-P. 1972: Symmaque. Lettres, Vol. 1: Livres 1–2, Paris.Google Scholar
Charlet, J.-L. 1980: L'influence d'Ausone sur la poésie de Prudence, Aix-en-Provence.Google Scholar
Citroni, M. 1995: Poesia e lettori in Roma antica. Forme della comunicazione letteraria, Rome.Google Scholar
Conybeare, C. 2007: ‘Sanctum, lector, percense volumen: snakes, readers, and the whole text in Prudentius's Hamartigenia’, in Klingshirn, W. E. and Safran, L. (eds), The Early Christian Book, Washington, DC, 225–40.Google Scholar
Coşkun, A. 2003: ‘Die Programmgedichte des Prudentius. Praefatio und epilogus’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 7, 212–36.10.1515/zach.2003.017Google Scholar
Coşkun, A. 2008: ‘Zur Biographie des Prudentius’, Philologus 152, 294–319.10.1524/phil.2008.0041Google Scholar
Cullhed, A. 2015: The Shadow of Creusa: Negotiating Fictionality in Late Antique Latin Literature, trans. Knight, M., Berlin.10.1515/9783110310948Google Scholar
Cunningham, M. P. 1966: Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina, CCSL 126, Turnhout.Google Scholar
Curtius, E. R. 1953: European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, W. R., Princeton.Google Scholar
Dolveck, F. 2015: Paulini Nolani Carmina, CCSL 21, Turnhout.Google Scholar
Dué, C. 2001: ‘Sunt aliquid manes: Homer, Plato, and Alexandrian allusion in Propertius IV 7’, The Classical Journal 96, 401–13.Google Scholar
Eden, K. 1997: Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and its Humanist Reception, New Haven.Google Scholar
Fassina, A. and Lucarini, C. M. 2015: Faltonia Betitia Proba. Cento Vergilianus, Berlin.Google Scholar
Fielding, I. 2014: ‘Elegiac memorial and the martyr as medium in Prudentius’ Peristephanon’, Classical Quarterly 64, 808–20.10.1017/S0009838814000135Google Scholar
Fielding, I. 2017: Transformations of Ovid in Late Antiquity, Cambridge.10.1017/9781316823576Google Scholar
Fontaine, J. 1973: ‘Les symbolismes de la cithare dans la poésie de Paulin de Nole’, in den Boer, P., van der Nat, P. G., Sicking, C. M. J. and van Winden, J. C. M. (eds), Romanitas et Christianitas, Amsterdam, 123–43.Google Scholar
Fowler, D. P. 2000: Roman Constructions: Readings in Postmodern Latin, Oxford.Google Scholar
Fux, P.-Y. 2003: Les sept passions de Prudence (Peristephanon 2. 5. 9. 11–14). Introduction general et commentaire, Fribourg.Google Scholar
Fux, P.-Y. 2013: Prudence et les martyrs. Hymnes et tragédie (Peristephanon 1. 3–4. 6–8. 10). Commentaire, Fribourg.Google Scholar
Georgii, H. 1905–6: Tiberi Claudi Donati Interpretationes Vergilianae (2 vols), Leipzig.Google Scholar
Gnilka, C. 1979: ‘Interpretation frühchristlicher Literatur. Dargestellt am Beispiel des Prudentius’, in Krefeld, H. (ed.), Impulse für die lateinische Lektüre. Von Terenz bis Thomas Morus, Frankfurt am Main, 138–80.Google Scholar
Gnilka, C. 1984–93: Chrêsis. Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der Antiken Kultur (2 vols), Basel.Google Scholar
Gnilka, C. 2000–3: Prudentiana (3 vols), Leipzig.Google Scholar
Gnilka, C. 2007: ‘Zum Epilogus des Prudentius’, in Gnilka, C. (ed.), Philologische Streifzüge durch die römische Dichtung, Basel, 459–93.Google Scholar
Gnilka, C. 2013: ‘Inscripta Christo pagina (Zu Prud. perist. 10,1119)’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 186, 119–20.Google Scholar
Goldhill, S. 1999. ‘Literary history without literature: reading practices in the ancient world’, SubStance 28, 57–89.10.2307/3685420Google Scholar
Green, R. P. H. 1999: Decimi Magni Ausonii Opera, Oxford.Google Scholar
Green, R. P. H. 2006: Latin Epics of the New Testament: Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator, Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199284573.001.0001Google Scholar
Grewing, F., Acosta-Hughes, B. and Kirichenko, A. (eds) 2013: The Door Ajar: False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art, Heidelberg.Google Scholar
Hardie, P. R. 2002: Ovid's Poetics of Illusion, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hartel, G. 1999: Paulinus Nolanus. Carmina, CSEL 30 (2nd edn), Vienna.Google Scholar
Heaney, S. 1998: ‘Crediting poetry’, in Heaney, S., Opened Ground: Poems 1966–1996, London, 413–30 (= Nobel Lecture, 7 December 1995).Google Scholar
Heinz, C. 2007: Mehrfache Intertextualität bei Prudentius, Frankfurt am Main.Google Scholar
Herrnstein Smith, B. 1968: Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End, Chicago.Google Scholar
Hershkowitz, P. 2017: Prudentius, Spain, and Late Antique Christianity: Poetry, Visual Culture, and the Cult of the Martyrs, Cambridge.10.1017/9781316569917Google Scholar
Holtz, L. 1981: Donat et la tradition de l'enseignement grammatical. Étude sur l’Ars Donati et sa diffusion (IVe–IXe siècle) et édition critique, Paris.Google Scholar
Jachmann, G. 1941: ‘Das Problem der Urvariante in der Antike und die Grundlagen der Ausoniuskritik’, Concordia Decennalis. Deutsche Italienforschungen, Cologne, 47–104.Google Scholar
Kania, R. 2016: Virgil's Eclogues and the Art of Fiction: A Study of the Poetic Imagination, Cambridge.10.1017/CBO9781139946612Google Scholar
Keith, A. M. 1999: ‘Slender verse: Roman elegy and ancient rhetorical theory’, Mnemosyne 52, 41–62.10.1163/1568525991560972Google Scholar
Keil, H. 1855–80: Grammatici latini (7 vols), Leipzig.Google Scholar
Kermode, F. 2000: The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, with a New Epilogue, Oxford.Google Scholar
Kristeva, J. 2007: Cet incroyable besoin de croire, Paris.Google Scholar
Lana, I. 1962: Due capitoli Prudenziani. La biographia, la cronologia delle opere, la poetica, Rome.Google Scholar
Lardelli, F. 2015: Dux salutis. Prudenzio, Cathemerinon 9–10. Gli inni della redenzione. Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento, Bern.10.3726/978-3-0351-0773-9Google Scholar
Lühken, M. 2002: Christianorum Maro et Flaccus. Zur Vergil- und Horazrezeption des Prudentius, Göttingen.Google Scholar
Malamud, M. A. 1989: A Poetics of Transformation: Prudentius and Classical Mythology, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Malamud, M. A. 2011: The Origin of Sin: An English Translation of the Hamartigenia, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Marcovich, M. 1988: Alcestis Barcinonensis: Text and Commentary, Leiden.10.1163/9789004328945Google Scholar
Markus, R. A. 1996: Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity, Liverpool.Google Scholar
Martindale, C. 1993: Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Mastrangelo, M. 2008: The Roman Self in Late Antiquity: Prudentius and the Poetics of the Soul, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Mastrangelo, M. 2009: ‘The decline of poetry in the fourth-century West’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 16, 311–29.10.1007/s12138-009-0131-5Google Scholar
Mastrangelo, M. 2017: ‘The early Christian response to Platonist poetics’, in Elsner, J. and Lobato, J. Hernández (eds), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, Oxford, 391–423.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199355631.003.0014Google Scholar
McGill, S. 2005: Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity, Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195175646.001.0001Google Scholar
McGill, S. 2016: Juvencus’ Four Books of the Gospels: Evangeliorum libri quattuor, New York.10.4324/9781315646978Google Scholar
Miller, P. C. 2000: ‘“The little blue flower is red”: relics and the poetizing of the body’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 8, 213–36.10.1353/earl.2000.0030Google Scholar
Miller, P. C. 2009: The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity, Philadelphia.10.9783/9780812204681Google Scholar
Most, G. W. 1992: ‘Disiecti membra poetae: the rhetoric of dismemberment in Neronian poetry’, in Hexter, R. and Selden, D. (eds), Innovations of Antiquity, New York, 391–419.Google Scholar
Nagy, G. 1990: Greek Mythology and Poetics, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Nünlist, R. 2009: The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia, Cambridge.10.1017/CBO9780511575891Google Scholar
O'Daly, G. 2012: Days Linked by Song: Prudentius’ Cathemerinon, Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263950.001.0001Google Scholar
O'Daly, G. 2016: ‘Prudentius: the self-definition of a Christian poet’, in McGill, S. and Pucci, J. (eds), Classics Renewed: Reception and Innovation in the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity, Heidelberg, 221–39.Google Scholar
O'Donnell, J. J. 1992: Augustine: Confessions (3 vols), Oxford.Google Scholar
O'Hogan, C. 2016: Prudentius and the Landscapes of Late Antiquity, Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198749226.001.0001Google Scholar
Palmer, A.-M. 1989: Prudentius on the Martyrs, Oxford.Google Scholar
Passalacqua, M. 1987: Prisciani Caesariensis. Opuscula, Vol. 1. De figuris numerorum, De metris Terentii, Praeexercitamina, Rome.Google Scholar
Pelttari, A. 2014: The Space that Remains: Reading Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Pelttari, A. 2019 (forthcoming): ‘The authorial drama of Prudentius in the Apotheosis, Amartigenia, and Psychomachia’, Lucida Intervalla 49.Google Scholar
Pianezzola, E. 1965: ‘Sulla doppia redazione in Prud. Cath. X, 9–16’, in Irmscher, J. (ed.), Miscellanea critica (2 vols), Leipzig, 2.269–86.Google Scholar
Poinsotte, J.-M. 2009: Commodien. Instructions, Paris.Google Scholar
Polara, G. 1973: Publilii Optatiani Porfyrii Carmina (2 vols), Turin.Google Scholar
Pollmann, K. 2013: ‘Establishing authority in Christian poetry of Latin Late Antiquity’, Hermes 141, 309–30.Google Scholar
Pucci, J. 1991: ‘Prudentius’ readings of Horace in the Cathemerinon’, Latomus 50, 677–90.Google Scholar
Richardson, N. 2016: Prudentius’ Hymns for Hours and Seasons: Liber Cathemerinon, London.Google Scholar
Rivero García, L. 1996: La poesía de Prudencio, Cáceres.Google Scholar
Roberts, M. 1989: The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Roberts, M. 1993: Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Rodriguez-Herrera, I. 1936: Poeta Christianus. Prudentius’ Auffassung vom Wesen und von der Aufgabe des christlichen Dichters, Speyer. Translated as ‘Poeta christianus: essencia y misión del poeta cristiano en la obra de Prudencio’, Helmantica 32 (1981), 5–184.Google Scholar
Roman, L. 2014: Poetic Autonomy in Ancient Rome, Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199675630.001.0001Google Scholar
Ross, J. 1995: ‘Dynamic writing and martyrs’ bodies in Prudentius’ Peristephanon’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 3, 325–55.10.1353/earl.0.0072Google Scholar
Ross, J. 2008: Figuring the Feminine: The Rhetoric of Female Embodiment in Medieval Hispanic Literature, Toronto.10.3138/9781442688100Google Scholar
Salvatore, A. 1958: ‘Varianti d'autore nel Cathemerinon’, in Salvatore, A. (ed.), Studi Prudenziani, Naples, 119–66.Google Scholar
Scheid, J. and Svenbro, J. 1996: The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Scheidegger Lämmle, C. 2015: ‘Einige Pendenzen. Weben und Text in der antiken Literatur’, in Harich-Schwarzbauer, H. (ed.), Weben und Gewebe in der Antike. Materialität – Repräsentation – Episteme – Metapoetik, Oxford, 167–208.Google Scholar
Schröder, B.-J. 1999: Titel und Text. Zur Entwicklung lateinischer Gedichtüberschriften, Berlin.Google Scholar
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. 1952: ‘Echoes of Propertius’, Mnemosyne 5, 307–33.10.1163/156852552X00371Google Scholar
Smolak, K. 2002: ‘Überlegungen zum Epilogus des Prudentius’, in Blümer, W., Henke, R. and Mülke, M. (eds), Alvarium. Festschrift für Christian Gnilka, Münster, 325–34.Google Scholar
Snyder, J. M. 1980: Puns and Poetry in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Soubiran, J. 1981: Aviénus. Les phénomènes d'Aratos, Paris.Google Scholar
Struck, P. 2004: The Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of their Texts, Princeton.10.1515/9781400826094Google Scholar
Svenbro, J. 1984: ‘Il taglio della poesia. Note sulle origini sacrificali della poetica greca’, Studi Storici 25, 925–44.Google Scholar
Thraede, K. 1965: Studien zu Sprache und Stil des Prudentius, Göttingen.Google Scholar
Trout, D. 2015: Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry, Oxford.Google Scholar
Turcan-Verkerk, A.-M. 2003: Un poète latin redécouvert. Latinius Pacatus Drepanius, panégyriste de Théodose, Collection Latomus 276, Brussels.Google Scholar
Vélez Latorre, J. M. 2001: ‘Figmenta poetarum. Prudencio entre retórica, Biblia e inspiración’, in Barrios Castro, M. J. and Crespo, E. (eds), Actas del X Congreso Español de Estudios Clásicos, Vol. 2. Lingüística latina, literatura latina, filología clásica, Madrid, 475–80.Google Scholar
Volk, K. 2002: The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Ovid, Virgil, Manilius, Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245505.001.0001Google Scholar
Walpole, A. S. 1922: Early Latin Hymns, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Wheeler, S. 1995: ‘Imago mundi: another view of the creation in Ovid's Metamorphoses’, The American Journal of Philology 116, 95–121.10.2307/295504Google Scholar
Williams, H. J. 1986: The Eclogues and Cynegetica of Nemesianus, Leiden.10.1163/9789004328235_008Google Scholar
Winstedt, E. O. 1903: ‘The double recension in the poems of Prudentius’, The Classical Review 17, 203–7.10.1017/S0009840X00207919Google Scholar
Witke, C. 1968: ‘Prudentius and the tradition of Latin poetry’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 99, 509–25.10.2307/2935860Google Scholar
Witke, C. 1971: Numen litterarum: The Old and the New in Latin Poetry from Constantine to Gregory the Great, Leiden.Google Scholar