J. Elsner and J. Hernández Lobato (eds.), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017. (original) (raw)

Ja? Elsner - Jesús Hernández Lobato (edd.), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature. Oxford studies in late antiquity, New York: Oxford University Press, viii+534 pp. $85.00, ISBN 978-0-19-935563-1

Exemplaria Classica

The foundations of modern study of the writings of late antique Latin authors were laid between the early 1960s and late 1970s by continental European scholars, with only incidental contributions from their colleagues in the UK and USA, where the conservatism of most Classics departments and the relative weakness of Roman Catholicism in wider society ensured that Statius and the Younger Pliny remained the ne plus ultra of ancient Latin literature for all but a few daredevils. The first and still solitary volume in what should have been a four-volume summa of this main European scholarly tradition appeared in 1989 as Restauration und Erneuerung: Die lateinische Literatur von 284 bis 374 n. Chr (= Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike [HLL], Bd 5), edited by Reinhart Herzog with an expansive, critically nuanced, richly documented introduction (not referenced anywhere in the work under review). Despite the handbook format, collaborators on the HLL addressed a full range of critical issues, including questions of genre, style, poetics, transmission history, etc. In the same year, Michael Roberts' The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity appeared like a bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky of Anglophone classical studies. Roberts explained that he followed Henri-Irénée Marrou, Jacques Fontaine and others in positing a 'common ground between Christian and pagan authors' in respect of 'aesthetic, and particularly stylistic, preferences'. He went on: 'More questionable is the supposition that there is a single aesthetic that is characteristic of late antiquity… but at least in poetry, it seems to me, it makes sense to talk of stylistic features that are typical of the period' (6). His modest claim-citing Arnold Hauser, Mannerism-for what art historians used to call 'period style' was supported by the literary-and art-historical evidence lucidly set out in his book, which is still the best introduction in English to late antique Latin poetry and, for the methodological framing of its subject, had no serious company in that language until the appearance of Aaron Pelttari's The Space that Remains: Reading Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity (2014). Since 1989, and especially over the last two decades, new fashions in classical literary studies-reception, intertextuality-have combined with the curricularization of Late Antiquity to encourage Latinists throughout an ever-widening Anglosphere to reinvest in the more classically inviting of Greek and Latin writers from later periods of the Roman Empire. The

(with J. Elsner), "Introduction: Notes towards a Poetics of Late Antique Literature", in J. Elsner and J. Hernández Lobato (eds.), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017, 1-22.

The introduction to this volume addresses three main issues. First, it provides a critical a reassessment of the discipline of late antique studies, going back to its very foundations and revealing its historical, cultural and political biases. Secondly, it presents and discusses the aesthetic/poetic paradigm of late antique literature and art proposed by the editors, thus setting forth the conceptual frame underlying the whole volume. To this end, notions like metaliterary twist, hybridization, poetics of the uncommon, culture of spolia, appropriationism, era of interpretation, cumulative aesthetics, poetics of the fragment/detail, etc. are briefly explained and discussed with the aid a number of representative examples. Last but not least, it explores the intriguing topicality of late antique culture in its problematic relationship to postmodern world. As usual in these pieces, the introduction also presents and justifies the volume’s aim and structure, as well as the main topics discussed by the different contributors.

The Vineyard of Verse: The State of Scholarship on Latin Poetry of the Old Society of Jesus

This review of scholarship on Jesuit humanistic literature and theater is Latin-oriented because the Society's sixteenth-century code of studies, the Ratio Studiorum, in force for nearly two centuries, enjoined the study and imitation in Latin of the best classical authors. Notwithstanding this well-known fact, co-ordinated modern scholarship on the Latin poetry, poetics, and drama of the Old Society is patchy. We begin with questions of sources, reception, and style. Then recent work on epic, didactic, and dramatic poetry is considered, and finally, on a handful of "minor" genres. Some genres and regions are well studied (drama in the German-speaking lands), others less so. There is a general scarcity of bilingual editions and commentaries of many "classic" Jesuit authors which would, in the first instance, bring them to the attention of mainstream modern philologists and literary historians, and, in the longer term, provide a firmer basis for more synoptic and synthetic studies of Jesuit intertextuality and style(s). Along with the interest and value of this poetry as world literature, I suspect that the extent to which the Jesuits' Latin labors in the vineyard of the classroom formed the hearts and minds of their pupils, including those who went on to become Jesuits, is underestimated.

An Anthology of Neo-Latin Poetry by Classical ScholarsAn Anthology of Neo-Latin Poetry by Classical Scholars, edited by William M. Barton, Stephen Harrison, Gesine Manuwald and Bobby Xinyue. Bloomsbury Academic: London, 2024.

An Anthology of Neo-Latin Poetry by Classical Scholars, 2024

Presenting a range of Neo-Latin poems written by distinguished classical scholars across Europe from c. 1490 to c. 1900, this anthology includes a selection of celebrated names in the history of scholarship. Individual chapters present the Neo-Latin poems alongside new English translations (usually the first) and accompanying introductions and commentaries that annotate these verses for a modern readership, and contextualise them within the careers of their authors and the history of classical scholarship in the Renaissance and early modern period. An appealing feature of Renaissance and early modern Latinity is the composition of fine Neo-Latin poetry by major classical scholars, and the interface between this creative work and their scholarly research. In some cases, the two are actually combined in the same work. In others, the creative composition and scholarship accompany each other along parallel tracks, when scholars are moved to write their own verse in the style of the subjects of their academic endeavours. In still further cases, early modern scholars produced fine Latin verse as a result of the act of translation, as they attempted to render ancient Greek poetry in a fitting poetic form for their contemporary readers of Latin.

Recent Studies in Neo-Latin Literature

English Literary Renaissance, 2010

ELR bibliographical articles are intended to combine a topical review of research with a reasonably complete bibliography. Scholarship is organized by authors or titles of anonymous works. Items included represent combined entries listed in the annual bibliographies published by PMLA, YWES. and MHRA from 1945 through, in the present instance, 1992. The format used here is a modified version of that used in Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, ed.

“Turning Back the Clock,” Review Article of J. Griffin Latin Poets and Roman Life

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 04 Feb 2016 16:53:00 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEW ARTICLE TURNING BACK THE CLOCK* Love is after all a very personal and individual as well as universal experience, and love poetry is usually (among other things) the expression of an individual who is or has been in love. -R. 0. A. M. Lyne, The Latin Love Poets By introducing the "image" of the poet, as distinct from the facts of the poet's life, as the true content of relevant poetry, he can forbid us to use poetry for disengaging "mere historical information." -E. Badian, review of J. E. G. Zetzel's contribution to B. K. Gold, ed., Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Romwe