The poetry of the late Roman world has a fascinating history. Sometimes an object of derision, sometimes an object of admiration, it has found numerous detractors and defenders among classicists and Latin literary critics. This volume explores the scholarly approaches to late Latin poetry that have developed over the last forty years, and it seeks especially to develop, complement and challenge the seminal concept of the ‘Jeweled Style’ proposed by Michael Roberts in 1989. While Roberts’s monograph has long been a vade mecum within the world of late antique literary studies, a critical reassessment of its validity as a concept is overdue.
This volume invites established and emerging scholars from different research traditions to return to the influential conclusions put forward by Roberts. It asks them to examine the continued relevance of The Jeweled Style and to suggest new ways to engage it. In a joint effort, the nineteen chapters of this volume define and map the jeweled style, extending it to new genres, geographic regions, time periods and methodologies. Each contribution seeks to provide insightful analysis that integrates the last thirty years of scholarship while pursuing ambitious applications of the jeweled style within and beyond the world of late antiquity.
The Latin poetry of late antiquity is at the heart of A Late Latin Poetics? The Jeweled Style Revisited, and the volume aims to develop, complement and challenge Michael Roberts’s highly influential concept of The Jeweled Style (1989). In its first part, it examines how the concept of the jeweled style applies to poetry outside the late antique Roman West including imperial poetry in Latin and Greek as well as late antique prose. Scholars in this section also clarify specific aspects of the jeweled style, for example enumeration, unity or use of the phrase before Michael Roberts’s monograph. All of these studies understand the jeweled style as a set of formal features not limited to late antique literature. In the second part, experts of late antiquity interpret the jeweled style in its late antique context, drawing connections to Christian praise, homiletics, architectural ecphrasis, epigrams and centos. Furthermore, in this section, the jeweled style is contextualised within contemporary scholarly discourses such as exegesis or Neoplatonism. Throughout the volume, scholars suggest new ways of engaging with the jeweled style. Crucial to these approaches, and to the appeal of the volume, are analyses that integrate the last thirty years of scholarship on the concept while pursuing new methodologies and applications, extending the jeweled style to new genres, geographic regions and time periods.
Author(s): Joshua Hartman; Helen Kaufmann (editors)
Series: sera tela: Studies in Late Antique Literature and Its Reception
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 328
City: London
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
CONTRIBUTORS
SERIES EDITOR PREFACE
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTE ON TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS
ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
The formal features of the jeweled style
The jeweled style and late antique aesthetics
PART I THE FORMAL FEATURES OF THE JEWELED STYLE
CHAPTER 1 THE DECADENT PREHISTORY OF THE JEWELED STYLE
Introduction: A chain of receptions
The language of jewels
The orientalism of the jeweled style
The aesthetics of decadence
From decadence to diversity
Conclusion: Towards a brighter future
CHAPTER 2 THE GREEK JEWELED STYLE
A Greek jeweled style in the third century?
The Greek jeweled style in the fourth and fifth centuries
Jeweled Christian prose and un-jeweled biblical poetry
CHAPTER 3 GILDING THE LILY: THE JEWELED STYLE IN PROSE PANEGYRIC
Non-metrical word patterning
Catalogues
Quotations and sententiae
Ecphrasis
Conclusion
CHAPTER 4 LEARNING THE JEWELED STYLE
Introduction
Schools in late antiquity
Classroom poetics in late antiquity
Polychromatic style
Variatio of vocabulary and theme
Description and structure
Conclusion
CHAPTER 5 QUANTITATIVE APPROACHES TO LATE ANTIQUE POETICS: ENUMERATION AND CONGERIES
Introduction
Methods and context
Methodological limitations and restrictions
Interpretation of findings
Conclusion
CHAPTER 6 THE JEWELED STYLE AND SILVER LATIN SCHOLARSHIP
Reclaiming the wood from the trees: Developments in scholarship on Silver Latin tree catalogues
The danger of discouraging contextual significance
The danger of overlooking the dynamics
Conclusion
CHAPTER 7 THE JEWELED STYLE IN EARLY MEDIEVAL LATIN POETRY
Aldhelm
Hisperica famina
Hucbald, Egloga de calvis
Conclusion
CHAPTER 8 DIGRESSION, VARIETY AND UNITY IN LATE LATIN POETRY
Digressions in ancient literary criticism and rhetoric
Variety and unity
Digressive rivers
Conclusion
PART II THE JEWELED STYLE AND LATE ANTIQUE AESTHETICS
CHAPTER 9 METAPHOR SQUARED
Arator, Epistula ad Florianum
Ennodius, Carmen 1.9
Merobaudes, Carmen 4
Merobaudes, Panegyricus poeticus
Metaphor squared as a literary technique
Conclusion
CHAPTER 10 AN ‘UNJEWELED’ CHRISTIAN STYLE? A LOOK AT AUGUSTINE’S CONFESSIONS
The jeweled style as a response to late antique ‘logoclasm’
Christian objections to the jeweled style
In quest of a genuinely Christian poetry
Augustine’s Confessions: A new poetic paradigm?
CHAPTER 11 THE CENTO AND SCRIPTURE: AN EARLY CHRISTIAN DEBATE OVER THE POETICS OF EXEGESIS
Competition and caution
Decoding Jerome: Ambrose as scriptural centonist
The poet-preacher Ambrose
De obitu Valentiniani as cento
Conclusion
CHAPTER 12 JEWELED SEA STORM DESCRIPTIONS IN ZENO OF VERONA (AND JUVENCUS)
The genera of Latin homiletics and the jeweled style
Sea storms in Zeno of Verona
Sea storms in biblical poetry: the case of Juvencus
Conclusion: Towards an assessment of jeweled Latin homiletics?
CHAPTER 13 ALLUSIVE CLUSTERS AND BIBLICAL CONFIGURATIONS IN DRACONTIUS’ DELAUDIBUS DEI: A CHRISTIAN JEWELED STYLE?
Stylistic patterns: Same techniques, new development
Clusters of allusions
A jeweled structure
The influence of patristic and biblical texts
Conclusion: A Christian jeweled style?
CHAPTER 14 VERGIL’S CHILDREN: PATTERNS IN CHRISTIAN CENTOS AND RESPONSES TO VERGIL’S FOURTH ECLOGUE
Cento de Ecclesia
Cento de Verbi Incarnatione
Conclusion
CHAPTER 15 ARCHITECTURAL ECPHRASIS IN VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS: BEYOND THE JEWELED STYLE
The villa and the church
Restorations
Light in late antique ecphrases of churches
Beyond the jeweled style
Conclusion
CHAPTER 16 THE JEWELED STYLE IN LATE ANTIQUE LATIN EPIGRAM
Introduction
Tessellated epigrams: Ennodius’ jeweled bishops and Christian ecphrastic epigram
Tessellation or exhaustion? Ausonian diadems, Claudian crystals and secular epigrammatic series
Conclusion
CHAPTER 17 THE JEWELED STYLE AND NEOPLATONISM
Introduction
The ‘unity’ of Macrobius’ Saturnalia
The number seven in Neoplatonism
An epistolary microcosmos: The letter collection of Q. Aurelius Symmachus
Conclusion
EPILOGUE: THE JEWELED STYLE IN CONTEXT
REFERENCES
INDEX RERUM
INDEX NOMINUM
INDEX LOCORUM
