The baptized muse : early Christian poetry as cultural authority / Karla Pollmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pollmann, Karla, author.

Contributor:

UPSO (University Press Scholarship Online)

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Christian poetry.

Christian poetry, Latin--History and criticism.

Christian poetry, Latin.

Genre:

Christian poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 269 pages.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017.

Language Note:

Some chapters originally published in German.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

With the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, increasing numbers of educated people converted to this new belief. As Christianity did not have its own educational institutions the issue of how to harmonize pagan education and Christian convictions became increasingly pressing. Especially classical poetry, the staple diet of pagan education, was considered to be morally corrupting due to its deceitful mythological content, and damaging for the salvation of the soul because of the false gods it advocated. But Christianity recoiled from an unqualified anti-intellectual attitude, while at the same time the experiment of creating an idiosyncratic form of Christian poetry that radically broke with the classical tradition, filed for the most part. In The Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority, Karla Pollmann argues that the majority of Christian poets made creative use of the classical literary tradition: they exploited poetry's special ability of enhancing communicative effectiveness and impact through aesthetic means and blended it with Judaeo-Christian biblical exegesis. Pollman explores these strategies through a close analysis of a wide range of Christian (and for comparison partly also pagan) writers, mainly from the fourth to sixth centuries. She reveals that early Christianity was not a hermetically sealed uniform body, but displays a rich spectrum of possibilities in dealing with the past and a willingness to engage with and adapt the surrounding culture(s), thereby developing diverse and changing responses to historical challenges. By demonstrating throughout that authority is a key in understanding the long denigrated and misunderstood early Christian poets, this study reaches the groundbreaking conclusion that early Christian poetry is an art form that gains its justification by adding cultural authority to Christianity. Thus, in a wider sense, The Baptized Muse engages with the recently developed interdisciplinary scholarly interest in aspects of religion as cultural phenomena. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I The Poetics of Authority in Early Christian Poetry

1 Tradition and Innovation: The Transformation of Classical Literary Genres in Christian Late Antiquity 19

2 The Test Case of Epic Poetry in Late Antiquity 37

3 Reappropriation and Disavowal: Pagan and Christian Authorities in Cassiodorus and Venantius Fortunatus 76

Part II Christian Authority and Poetic Succession

4 Sex and Salvation in the Vergilian Cento of the Fourth Century 101

5 Versifying Authoritative Prose: Poetical Paraphrases of Eucherius of Lyon by Venantius Fortunatus, Walafrid Strabo, and Sigebert of Gembloux 120

6 Jesus Christ and Dionysus: Rewriting Euripides in the Byzantine Cento Christus Patiens 140

Part III Poetic Authority in Rivalling Cultural and Theological Discourses

7 Culture as Curse or Blessing? Prudentius and Avitus on the Origins of Culture 161

8 Christianity as Decadence or Progress in Pseudo-Hilary's Paraphrastic Verse Summary of the History of Salvation 176

9 How Far Can Sainthood Go? St Martin of Tours in Two Hagiographical Epics of Late Antiquity 191.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-257) and indexes.

Electronic reproduction. Oxford Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780191793295

0191793299

Publisher Number:

40027003971

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.