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"Pelttari, Aaron"
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The Space that Remains
When we think of Roman Poetry, the names most likely to come to mind are Vergil, Horace, and Ovid, who flourished during the age of Augustus. The genius of Imperial poets such as Juvenal, Martial, and Statius is now generally recognized, but the final years of the Roman Empire are not normally associated with poetic achievement. Recently, however, classical scholars have begun reassessing a number of poets from Late Antiquity-names such as Ausonius, Claudian, and Prudentius-understanding them as artists of considerable talent and influence. InThe Space That Remains, Aaron Pelttari offers the first systematic study of these fourth-century poets since Michael Robert's foundationalThe Jeweled Style(Cornell, 1989). It is the first to give equal attention to both Christian and Pagan poetry and the first to take seriously the issue of readership.
Like the Roman Empire, Latin literature was in a state of flux during the fourth century. As Pelttari shows, the period marked a turn towards forms of writing that privilege the reader's active involvement in shaping the meaning of the text. In the poetry of Ausonius, Claudian, and Prudentius we can see the increasing importance of distinctions between old and new, ancient and modern, conservatism and progress. The strange traditionalism and verbalism of the day often concealed a desire for immediacy and presence. We can see these changes most clearly in the expectations placed upon readers. The space that remains is the space that the reader comes to inhabit, as would increasingly become the case in the literature of the Latin Middle Ages.
eBook
Gigantomachy and the Psychomachia of Prudentius
In the Psychomachia , Prudentius engages with the myth and poetry of the gigantomachy, in particular the work of Claudian, his foremost poetic contemporary and occasional rival. Prudentius' dialogue with Claudian is one crucial input for understanding how he blends epic poetry and scriptural interpretation into a full-scale personification allegory that depicts a war between good and evil within the cosmos and within individual human beings. In this way, the currency of the gigantomachy in the early 5th century is critical for understanding the contemporary poetic significance of Prudentius' greatest work.
Journal Article
The Reader and the Resurrection in Prudentius
In Prudentius, the bodily resurrection becomes a figure for poetic immortality. Just as the author believes that his God will one day raise him from the dead, he expects and invokes a Christian reader to authenticate and authorise the fragile verbal records of a poetry that is insistently human and fallen. In other words, Prudentius’ metapoetics are perfectly in sync with his theology. After (I) presenting Prudentius’ transformation at the end of his Praefatio and setting out the terms and scope of the argument, this article (II) shows how the author puts himself at the mercy of his readers and patrons in the Peristefanon poems and then (III) considers the body and the resurrection in the Liber Cathemerinon. A short section (IV) on fictionality and belief opens up the argument, and a conclusion (V) advances it through a reading of the end of De opusculis suis. This metapoetic reading of Prudentius reveals that the author's hopes for an afterlife are expressed in and through the creative imagining of poetic and fictional scenes.
Journal Article
Symmachus' Epistulae 1.31 and Ausonius' Poetics of the Reader
Symmachus' playful offer to plagiarize Ausonius reveals their culture's assumption that an author's work ought to be acknowledged. Symmachus' humor, however, extends beyond the question of an author's right to his own work; it also engages Ausonius' lively interest in the reception of his poetry. Pelttari argues that, while he agrees that Symmachus' letter is evidence that both authors had an idea of plagiarism analogous to to this age's idea of it, the letter can only be fully understood in light of Ausonius' poetics. In the first half of this note, he explains his reading of the epistolary exchange between Symmachus and Ausonius. In the second half, he places Synimachus' letter within the broader context of Ausonius' poetry, a body of poetry significant both on its own account and because Ausonius exemplifies the taste of his age.
Journal Article