The Psychomachia of Prudentius
The Psychomachia of Prudentius

Author: Aaron Pelttari

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2019-08-22

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0806165626

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Prudentius (b. 348 c.e.), one of the greatest Latin poets of late antiquity, was also a devoted Christian. His allegorical masterpiece, Psychomachia, combines epic language and theological speculation to offer a powerful vision of Roman and Christian triumphalism. Yet this important work—one of the most popular and influential poems of the Middle Ages—is unfamiliar to most contemporary students of Latin. This edition, featuring the first full-length English commentary on the poem, makes Psychomachia accessible to modern learners. In his wide-ranging introduction, Aaron Pelttari examines the life of Prudentius, the world of late antiquity, and the structure of Psychomachia, along with its aims, reception, and manuscript transmission. The Latin text includes an apparatus criticus, and the corresponding commentary covers points of textual, grammatical, literary, and historical interest. Following the commentary are two appendices: an explanation of the poem’s meter, and a glossary of rhetorical and literary terms. A bibliography and a complete Latin-to-English glossary round out the volume. Ten illustrations enrich the text by showcasing medieval illuminations and early editions of the poem. Ideally suited for intermediate and advanced students of Latin, this volume is also useful for instructors and scholars, who will welcome its lucid interpretation of the poem and expert guidance on difficult passages. With its concise yet carefully considered format, The Psychomachia of Prudentius will be a welcome addition to scholarship on late antique Latin literature.

Prudentius' Psychomachia
Prudentius' Psychomachia

Author: Macklin Smith

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-03-08

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1400871166

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Prudentius' Psychomachia, written about A.D. 405, has been studied by classicists, medievalists, and general literary historians. Nevertheless, scholars have barely explored the allegory's inner workings or related it to its historical context. The present study remedies this critical neglect and its attendant misreadings. The author arrives at a coherent, unified interpretation by examining the work's major features in relation to the poet's life and times. He contends that the poet balanced an affirmation of Christian allegory with an ironic negation of pagan literary tradition. For this remarkable achievement his audience was the aristocracy, still largely pagan at a time of intense antagonism between the Church and old Roman religious institutions. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Roman Self in Late Antiquity
The Roman Self in Late Antiquity

Author: Marc Mastrangelo

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2007-12-21

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0801887224

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The Roman Self in Late Antiquity for the first time situates Prudentius within a broad intellectual, political, and literary context of fourth-century Rome. As Marc Mastrangelo convincingly demonstrates, the late-fourth-century poet drew on both pagan and Christian intellectual traditions -- especially Platonism, Vergilian epic poetics, and biblical exegesis -- to define a new vision of the self for the newly Christian Roman Empire. Mastrangelo proposes an original theory of Prudentius's allegorical poetry and establishes Prudentius as a successor to Vergil. Employing recent approaches to typology and biblical exegesis as well as the most current theories of allusion and intertextuality in Latin poetry, he interprets the meaning and influence of Prudentius's work and positions the poet as a vital author for the transmission of the classical tradition to the early modern period. This provocative study challenges the view that poetry in the fourth century played a subordinate role to patristic prose in forging Christian Roman identity. It seeks to restore poetry to its rightful place as a crucial source for interpreting the rich cultural and intellectual life of the era.

Structures of Appearing:Allegory and the Work of Literature
Structures of Appearing:Allegory and the Work of Literature

Author: Brenda Machosky

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0823242846

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Structures of Appearing: Allegory and the Work of Literature is an interdisciplinary study that revises the history of allegory through a phenomenological approach. The book also takes on the history of aesthetics as an ideology that has long subjugated literature (and art generally) to criteria of judgment that are philosophical rather than literary.

Speculative Grammar and Stoic Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative
Speculative Grammar and Stoic Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative

Author: Jeffrey Bardzell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-07-01

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1135865914

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In his Plaint of Nature (De planctu Naturae), Alan of Lille bases much of his argument against sin in general and homosexuality in particular on the claim that both amount to bad grammar. The book explores the philosophical uses of grammar that were so formative of Alan’s thinking in major writers of the preceding generations, including Garland the Computist, St. Anselm, and Peter Abelard. Many of the linguistic theories on which these thinkers rely come from Priscian, an influential sixth-century grammarian, who relied more on the ancient tradition of Stoic linguistic theory than the Aristotelian one in elaborating his grammatical theory. Against this backdrop, the book provides a reading of Prudentius’ Psychomachia and presents an analysis of allegory in light of Stoic linguistic theory that contrasts other modern theories of allegorical signification and readings of Prudentius. The book establishes that Stoic linguistic theory is compatible with and likely partially formative of both the allegorical medium itself and the ideas expressed within it, in particular as they appeared in the allegories of Prudentius, Boethius, and Alan.

The Sword of Judith
The Sword of Judith

Author: Kevin R. Brine

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 511

ISBN-13: 1906924155

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The Book of Judith tells the story of a fictitious Jewish woman beheading the general of the most powerful imaginable army to free her people. The parabolic story was set as an example of how God will help the righteous. Judith's heroic action not only became a validating charter myth of Judaism itself but has also been appropriated by many Christian and secular groupings, and has been an inspiration for numerous literary texts and works of art. It continues to exercise its power over artists, authors and academics and is becoming a major field of research in its own right. The Sword of Judith is the first multidisciplinary collection of essays to discuss representations of Judith throughout the centuries. It transforms our understanding across a wide range of disciplines. The collection includes new archival source studies, the translation of unpublished manuscripts, the translation of texts unavailable in English, and Judith images and music.

A Poetics of Transformation
A Poetics of Transformation

Author: Martha A. Malamud

Publisher:

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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Martha Malamud here examines conflicting cultural, religious, and literary codes in the work of Prudentius (348-post 405), perhaps the most influential poet of late antiquity. Breaking new ground, Malamud illuminates Prudentius' use of paradigms from classical mythology and suggests that his poetry constitutes both an analysis and a critique of the Christianity of his day.

Ambiguous Antidotes
Ambiguous Antidotes

Author: Hilaire Kallendorf

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1487502133

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In Ambiguous Antidotes, Hilaire Kallendorf explores the receptions of Virtues in the realm of moral philosophy and the artistic production it influenced during the Spanish Gold Age.

Prudentius and the Landscapes of Late Antiquity
Prudentius and the Landscapes of Late Antiquity

Author: Cillian O'Hogan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0198749228

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Prudentius and the Landscapes of Late Antiquity offers a thematic analysis of the poetry of the late Latin poet Prudentius, focusing in particular on his descriptions of the geographical and cultural landscapes of late antiquity. Cillian O'Hogan sets Prudentius in the context of other late antique authors, including Lactantius, Jerome, Augustine, and Endelechius, and argues that the poet makes use of allusion to Augustan and early imperial Latin authors to present the late Roman landscape as one markedly altered by the arrival of Christianity, though retaining the grandeur of the pagan past. This volume examines his conception of the world as a text, his use of intertextuality to describe literary journeys, his view of the civic function of Christian martyrdom, his conception of heaven, and his attitude towards art and architecture, combining philological and intertextual criticism with approaches drawn from the fields of book history, cultural geography, and theology to paint a fuller and richer picture of the greatest of the Christian Latin poets.