After centuries of near silence, Latin poetry underwent a renaissance in the late fourth and fifth centuries CE evidenced in the works of key figures such as Ausonius, Claudian, Prudentius, and Paulinus of Nola. This period of resurgence marked a milestone in the reception of the classics of late Republican and early imperial poetry. In Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry, Philip Hardie explores the ways in which poets writing on non-Christian and Christian subjects used the classical traditions of Latin poetry to construct their relationship with Rome’s imperial past and present, and with the by now not-so-new belief system of the state religion, Christianity. The book pays particular attention to the themes of concord and discord, the "cosmic sense" of late antiquity, novelty and renouatio, paradox and miracle, and allegory. It is also a contribution to the ongoing discussion of whether there is an identifiably late antique poetics and a late antique practice of intertextuality. Not since Michael Robert's classic The Jeweled Style has a single book had so much to teach about the enduring power of Latin poetry in late antiquity.
Philip Hardie is Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Honorary Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge. He is the author of many books and articles on Latin literature and its post-antique reception.
“This densely textured study of late antique poetry demonstrates, in dazzling detail, the continuities between late antique and classical poetic practices, all the while attending to the difference Christianity makes. Philip Hardie mounts a strong case against any sort of strict periodization or identification of a distinctive late antique style, showing how much a traditional intertextualist approach has to offer to this body of poetry—and thus how much late antique poetry, Christian and traditional alike, owes to the earlier tradition.”—Ellen Oliensis, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley
“Philip Hardie brings his extraordinary skills as reader to the complex, allusive poetry of Latin late antiquity. The results are a revelation—both to those familiar with authors such as Ausonius or Claudian and those for whom the later poets are a discovery.” —Susanna Elm, author of Sons of Hellenism, Father of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome
304 pp.6 x 9
9780520295773$49.95|£42.00Hardcover
Aug 2019