Early Christian Poetry Research Articles

Piers Plowman and the Books of Nature by Rebecca Davis

Religion & Literature 198 in thematic terms that the book hangs together as a whole. As for intertextuality and influence, the first reason, Pollmann deals with an impressive range of authors and issues. As is often the case in studies of late antique poetry, the focus is Roman rather than Greek (the only exception is the aforementioned chapter on Euripides and the Christus patiens). But within the ranks of late Latin writers, Pollman discusses a wide variety, from the beginnings of late Latin and early Christian poetry down into the Middle Ages, including Walafrid Strabo and Sigebert of Gembloux. She has divided the chapters into three major sections: “The Poetics of Authority in Early Christian Poetry”; “Christian Authority and Poetic Succession”; and “Poetic Authority in Rivalling Cultural and Theological Discourses.” I will focus here on two of the several key themes that emerge throughout the essays. First, in order to understand the social function of late Latin poetry, and particularly Christian Latin poetry, it is essential to grasp that it is poetry with a cultural agenda; the poet—whether Proba or Prudentius, Arator or Avitus—wants you, the reader, to do something. That is, the poems are intended to force a choice on the reader, to interrogate and bring about to a decision. Neutrality in the face of the text’s demands is foreclosed before the text has even begun. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad” (Matthew 12:30). This is the impulse that informs Christian poetry. What is the reader to do? He is to accept Christianity and reform his life. It is a theme that has been explored in other recent works as well, such as Marc Mastrangelo’s The Roman Self in Late Anquity: Prudentius and the Poetics of the Soul (2008). The production of Christian poetry, then, is an act consisting of the aggrandizement of authority. Scripture preeminently, and the lives of the saints secondarily, are the authorities that explicitly underwrite the poets’ claims. Second, however, and relatedly, the Christian poet has to deal with a different canon as well: the canon of pagan authors. The best mode of posture toward the pagan past was, throughout late antiquity, in the process of constant renegotiation by Christian writers. Augustine resolved the question most famously through his notion of “spoiling the Egyptians” in Book 2 of De doctrina christiana, but he was neither the first nor the last to make an attempt, nor is his model without rivals. Pollmann treats various possibilities in chapters on Cassiodorus and Venantius Fortunatus and on the cento of Proba. Of Cassiodorus (a prose author, of course), Pollmann argues convincingly for his attempt to “Christianize pagan erudition” (77) through a “manipulative engagement of canonical...authorities,” in which he uses Augustine selectively to forge his own (different) program, “thus BOOK REVIEWS 199 camouflaging a de facto discontinuity by pretending continuity” (97-98). Proba, on the other hand, rewrites in a different way, claiming to find a hidden message of Christian salvation that was locked in the Vergilian poems all along, awaiting only the hand that could draw them out (112); this is set in contrast to Ausonius’ saucy use of the same authority in the Cento nuptialis. On both scores, Christian writers have to find a way to deal with their own “secondariness,” with writing what Gerard Genette (to whom Pollmann refers) calls “literature in the second degree” under the stern stare of their literary ancestors who, in the words of W. H. Auden, “challenge, warn and witness.” Pollman deals with the phenomenon admirably, whether the source text in view is the Bible, a prose Vita of a saint, or a poetic forebear. One further type not covered, but meriting further research in the future, is how to approach authors who transform their own texts, giving different versions in verse and prose; significant here is Sedulius’s foray into the opus geminatum: the Carmen paschale (in verse) and Opus paschale (in prose). But one cannot cover everything, and what Pollmann covers she covers thoroughly. We live in the best time for reading late Latin poetry...

The Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority by Karla Pollmann

Religion & Literature 196 verse, clarified by comparison to an analogous element in another poetic tradition (from the style of Ugaritic epic to the rhythms of Old English verse to the syntactic patterns of the Yupik Eskimo). By formulating the language of this comparative, conversational inquiry in terms that will be familiar not only to biblical scholars but to scholars of literature and poetry as well, Dobbs-Allsopp makes a compelling bid for biblical poetry to follow biblical narrative and take its own place in the canon of comparative literatures. The book is divided into five chapters. Each of the first four advances a critical term for the study of biblical poetry (line, rhythm, lyric, and orality), while the fifth puts this new critical idiom to work, offering an interpretation of the brief poem found in Psalm 133. In Chapter 1, Dobbs-Allsopp makes a case that the poetic line (rather than the parallelistic line-pair) constitutes the “prosodic motor and defining feature of biblical verse” (20). Reframing this poetic line not as a matter of graphic representation but as a structure that was originally vocalized, Dobbs-Allsopp explores the ways in which stylistic features like parallelism served this oral tradition by magnifying the singularity of the poetic line in the absence of visual representation—individuating and emphasizing that line as “the fulcrum of its play” (93). Chapter 2 lends new conceptual clarity to the absence of meter in biblical poetry, construing this absence not as a deficiency, but as evidence of the Bible’s participation in a poetic tradition associated with the rhythms of modern writers like Walt Whitman—a tradition we would now call “free verse.” Chapter 3 considers the predominance of “lyric” poetry in the biblical canon—exploring how, in the absence of plot, lyric exploits language, syntax, and rhythm beyond their normal capacities as an “alternative means for organizing its discourse, for demarcating boundaries, for guiding auditors through to a satisfying denouement” (191). Chapter 4 addresses the interpretive missteps that arise as a consequence of the “hyper-literate orientation” of modern readers by taking a closer look at the “informing orality” of biblical poetics. Here, Dobbs-Allsopp clarifies that many of the stylistic features of this poetic tradition—the characteristic brevity of its lines, its rhythm, even its over studied parallel structure—can be understood better in relationship to the oral traditions that shaped the original composition and reception of these poems. The remarkable strength of these chapters is that they manage not only to provide fine-grained studies of the stylistic features of biblical verse illuminated by these new terms, but to do so in a way that contributes to wider scholarly conversations about poetic lineation, free rhythm, lyric, and orality. In this way, Dobbs-Allsopp does for biblical poetry what Erich Auerbach once did for biblical narrative: ushering it into the world of comparative literature by placing it alongside the Greek classics as a different primogenitor BOOK REVIEWS 197 of the Western literary tradition that can illuminate the works that follow it in new ways. On Biblical Poetry is a master class on the Hebrew Bible’s poetic tradition. Enriching, instructive, and demanding, it has that rare quality in a work of literary criticism (or biblical scholarship for that matter) that makes readers want to return to the objects of study—the poems themselves—to test out the promise of these hypotheses and see what more can be said. Together with other recently published studies in this area, including Jacqueline Vayntrub’s Beyond Orality, this text signals a new beginning in the study of biblical poetry—a discipline that will soon require a much larger bookshelf. Ashleigh Elser Hampden-Sydney College The Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority Karla Pollmann Oxford University Press, 2017. vii + 269 pp. $80 cloth. In “Plato; or, the Philosopher,” Ralph Waldo Emerson comments that “[e]very book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.” That quotation is an appropriate way to begin a review of Karla Pollmann’s The Baptized Muse—for at least three reasons. First...

Karla Pollman, The Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority

Karla Pollman, <i>The Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority</i>

Obraz heretyka w Liber apotheosis Aureliusza Prudencjusza Klemensa

This article attempts to show the image of heretics in early Christian poetry. There are presented most characteristic speeches Aurelius Prudentius Clemens – Spanish poet from the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries, contained especially in the Liber Apotheosis and concerning the problem of derogation from the orthodox faith. The sources of heresy are widely discussed as well as all specific vocabu­lary, which is mostly negatively marked.

Karla Pollmann, The Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority

Karla Pollmann, <i>The Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority</i>

Judas, More than a Betrayer: His Role in Early Christian Poetry

Judas, More than a Betrayer: His Role in Early Christian Poetry

Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays (review)

Reviewed by: Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays Carl P. E. Springer J. den Boeft and A. Hilhorst. Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 22. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993. Pp. xi 1 319. $103.00. The sixteen essays collected in this volume were first presented at a conference held at Nijmegen in March of 1991 to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Dutch Foundation for Early Christian Studies. Although one would hardly expect such a vast field to be fully represented in a volume which consists of conference papers, when taken together these studies do give the reader at least some idea of the richness and variety of materials, many of which have not yet been exhaustively studied from either a theological or a literary perspective, available to the student of early Christian poetry. The essays address (without always resolving) a number of intriguing issues concerning the origin of Christian poetry, its function and audience, its complex relation to the classical tradition, and, of course, its debt to biblical themes and models. [End Page 392] From the earliest period, when “the Jewish legacy is clearly manifest,” we have P. W. van der Horst, all too briefly, on “Jewish Metrical Epitaphs,” G. P. Luttikhuizen with a provocative (but cursory) essay on “The Poetic Character of Revelation 4 and 5,” and G. J. M. Bartelink on the reception of the Oracula Sibyl-lina by early Christian Greek theologians from Justin Martyr to Origen. The second section, which features essays on Christian poetry in the Latin-speaking portion of the Roman Empire, fairly sparkles in comparison. Christine Mohrmann’s spirit obviously lives on! W. Evenepoel thoughtfully addresses the complex issues surrounding “The Place of Poetry in Latin Christianity,” looking especially at the problem of poetry not meant for “immediate ecclesiastical use.” A. Hilhorst offers a comparative examination of the treatment of the pericope of the cleansing of the temple (John 2.13–25) in the Latin Evangeliorum Libri Quattuor of Juvencus and the Greek metrical paraphrase of the Gospel of John by Nonnus. Jan den Boeft waxes practically rhapsodic in his praise of “Ambrosius lyricus,” undoubtedly the most original and influential hymn writer in the early church. M. J. Mans, also writing on the hymns of the bishop of Milan, examines the function of biblical figures and events featured in the hymns. Certainly the most theoretically astute article in the volume is the contribution of A. A. R. Bastiaensen on “Prudentius in Recent Literary Criticism.” Bastiaensen bravely tackles such controversial topics as the European reception of M. Cunningham’s CCSL edition of Prudentius (published in 1966), W. Ludwig’s thesis that the whole of Prudentius’ work, which may be seen as including all major poetic categories, such as “epic, didactic, lyric, epigrammatic and elegiac, even comic and tragic (in the Peristephanon),” actually constitutes a poetical unity (along the lines of an early Christian basilica), and K. Thraede’s determination to view Prudentius first and foremost as a rhetorical poet. This provocative article concludes with a fascinating glimpse into the Nachleben of Prudentius’ poetry, especially the Psychomachia. P. W. A. Th. van der Laan finishes this section with a thoughtful study of the problem of imitation in the Paschale Carmen of Sedulius, one of the most important of the biblical epics of Late Antiquity, whose popularity persisted well into the early modern period. The question posed by van der Laan is a crucial one: was Sedulius’ imitatio veterum by accident or by design? The answer is nuanced (as it should be), but decisive. The third part of the volume concentrates on Christian poetry from the eastern half of the Roman empire. Without question the most idiosyncratic article here is Andrew Palmer’s “The Merchant of Nisibis: Saint Ephrem and His Faithful Quest for Union in Numbers.” While it would be hard to overstate the importance of “the greatest poet in the Syriac language,” Palmer’s lengthy article (67 pages) almost manages to do so. The author’s lively translations which he hopes will be “sung and loved” are, to be sure, welcome, as is his personal identification with his subject (all too rare in academic circles), but...

Late Antique Religious Poetry - J. Den Boeft, A. Hilhorst: Early Christian Poetry: a Collection of Essays. (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 22: Texts and Studies of Early Christian Life and Language). Pp. xii+320. Leiden, New York, Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1993. Cased, Gld. 180/$103.

Late Antique Religious Poetry - J. Den Boeft, A. Hilhorst: Early Christian Poetry: a Collection of Essays. (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 22: Texts and Studies of Early Christian Life and Language). Pp. xii+320. Leiden, New York, Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1993. Cased, Gld. 180/$103.

J. den Boeft and A. Hilhorst (eds), Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae XXII). Leiden and New York: Brill, 1993. Pp. xi + 319. ISBN 90-04-09939-5. Fl. 180/US$103.00.

J. den Boeft and A. Hilhorst (eds), Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae XXII). Leiden and New York: Brill, 1993. Pp. xi + 319. ISBN 90-04-09939-5. Fl. 180/US$103.00. - Volume 85

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Cynics and Christian Origins. By F. Gerald Downing. A Study of Ignatius of Antioch in Syria and Asia (Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 29). By Christine Trevett. The Emergence of Christian Theology. By Eric Osborn. Early Christian Poetry: A Collection of Essays Edited by J. den Boeft and A. Hilhorst. Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages. By Thomas J. Heffernan. Angelic Monks and Earthly Men. By Ludo J. R. Milis. Evacute;γómμα: Studies in Honor of Robert Taft, S. J. Studia Anselmiana. Analecta liturgica, 17. Edited by E. Cam and others. The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East I: Problems in the Literary Source Material. Edited by Averil Cameron and Lawrence I. Conrad. Christendom and Christianity in the Middle Ages: The Relations between Religion, Church and Society. By Adriaan H. Bredero. The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain 1031–1157. By Bernard F. Reilly. Shield and Sword: Jewish Polemics against Christianity and the Christians in France and Spain from 1100–1500 (Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism 8). By Hanne Trautner‐Kromann. Living and Dying in England 1100–1540: The Monastic Experience. By Barbara Harvey. Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, c.1075‐c.1125 (Oxford Historical Monographs). By Teresa Webber. Renaissance Philosophy (A History of Western Philosophy 3). By Brian P. Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt. Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period. Essays edited by Marjorie Reeves. Beyond Charity. Reform Initiatives for the Poor. By Carter Lindberg. Marcello Cervini and Ecclesiastical Government in Tridentine Italy. By William V. Hudon. Interpretations of Erasmus c.1750‐1920: Man On His Own. By Bruce Mansfield. F. D. Maurice and Unitarianism. By David Young. The Convert Cardinals: John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning. By David Newsome. Communication and Change in American Religious History. Edited by Leonard I. Sweet. New Dimensions in American Religious History: Essays in Honor of Martin E. Marty. Edited by Jay P. Dolan and James P. Wind. John Courtney Murray and the American Civil Conversation. Edited by Robert P. Hunt and Kenneth L. Grasso. American Catholics and the Formation of the United Nations (Melville Studies in Church History 4). By Joseph S. Rossi. Religion in Public Life. Edited by Dan Cohn‐Sherbok and David McLellan. Dirty Hands: The Problem of Political Morality. By Steve Buckler. The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion. By Stephen L. Carter. The Church and Morality: An Ecumenical and Catholic Approach. By Charles E. Curran. Human Morality. By Samuel Scheffler. Religion and Mental Health. Edited by John F. Schumaker. Religion and Sexual Health. Edited by Ronald M. Green. Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction. By George Graham. Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists and Atheists. By J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, with contributions by Peter Kreeft, Antony Flew, William Lane Craig, Keith Parsons, Dallas Willard. Is God Real? Edited by Joseph Runzo. Passionate Reason: Making Sense of Kierkegaard's ‘Philosophical Fragments’. By C. Stephen Evans.