At the crossroads of biblical reading and commentary, mysteries and liturgical celebrations, literary traditions of classical Romanity, the Latin poetry of Christian antiquity attests, in a time of profound changes which alternates rebirths and crises, a new conception of the aesthetic, spiritual and militant issues of poetic creation. Far from an aesthetic entertainment of which, with a few rare exceptions, it does not however deny the formal excellence, the poetry of the Latin Christians reinvents the great genres and the poetic images of antiquity “for the better” to clarify if not “to reenchant” the Scriptures, to honour the heroes of the Bible and the faith, to serve doctrinal orthodoxy, discipline and moral values proclaimed by the Roman Church. Through a selection of twenty-four studies, all revised, updated and accompanied by an unpublished epilogue, this book illustrates different aspects of the way in which ancient Christianity thus went to “the conquest of its poetry”.
EAA 211: Paris, Institut d’études augustiniennes, 2022
ISBN: 978-2-85121-322-8
334 p., 165 x 250 mm
69€ TTC
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