Writing to Survive. A Commentary on Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters Book 7. Volume 1
The Episcopal Letters 1-11
by J.A. van Waarden
A key figure in late antique Gaul, Sidonius Apollinaris – aristocrat, administrator, poet, letter-writer, and bishop – is still insufficiently understood. This study aims to contribute to an up-to-date appreciation, both by incorporating recent research and by breaking new ground. It is a philological and historical commentary with many of the qualities of a monograph. Focusing on eleven letters written by Sidonius to his fellow bishops, one of which contains the only surviving example of Sidonius’ prose oratory, it fills an important gap in the critical coverage of his literary production. A lengthy introduction situates the letters within Sidonius’ life and works, the politics of the last years of the Roman empire in the west, and the traditions of late antique epistolography. Use is made throughout of modern research in linguistics, and a fresh hypothesis on the rendering of ‘you’ and ‘I’ in Sidonius’ correspondence is proposed. The book offers a reappraisal of late antique stylistic ‘mannerism’ as ‘community art’ which gives preference to the socially unifying function of art over its individual creative potential. This is a work which will be of interest to classicists and medievalists, to literary scholars and church historians, to those concerned with philological and historical intricacies and those interested in the broader development of literature and mentalities in Late Antiquity.
A key figure in late antique Gaul, Sidonius Apollinaris – aristocrat, administrator, poet, letter-writer, and bishop – is still insufficiently understood. This study aims to contribute to an up-to-date appreciation, both by incorporating recent research and by breaking new ground. It is a philological and historical commentary with many of the qualities of a monograph. Focusing on eleven letters written by Sidonius to his fellow bishops, one of which contains the only surviving example of Sidonius’ prose oratory, it fills an important gap in the critical coverage of his literary production. A lengthy introduction situates the letters within Sidonius’ life and works, the politics of the last years of the Roman empire in the west, and the traditions of late antique epistolography. Use is made throughout of modern research in linguistics, and a fresh hypothesis on the rendering of ‘you’ and ‘I’ in Sidonius’ correspondence is proposed. The book offers a reappraisal of late antique stylistic ‘mannerism’ as ‘community art’ which gives preference to the socially unifying function of art over its individual creative potential. This is a work which will be of interest to classicists and medievalists, to literary scholars and church historians, to those concerned with philological and historical intricacies and those interested in the broader development of literature and mentalities in Late Antiquity.
- By (author) JA van Waarden
Other Titles in this Series
Writing to Survive. A Commentary on Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters Book 7. Volume 2
The Ascetic Letters 12-18
Volume 14
Inside and Out
Interactions between Rome and the Peoples on the Arabian and Egyptian Frontiers in Late Antiquity
Volume 8
New Themes, New Styles in the Eastern Mediterranean
Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Encounters, 5th-8th Centuries
Volume 16
Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity
Encounters in the Abrahamic Religions, 6th-8th Centuries
Volume 17
L’écriture de l’histoire en syriaque
Transmissions interculturelles et constructions identitaires entre hellénisme et islam. Avec des répertoires des textes historiographiques en annexe
Volume 12
Empire, Church and Society in the Late Roman Near East
Greeks, Jews, Syrians and Saracens (Collected Studies, 2004-14)
Volume 10
En Route to the Confessions
The Roots and Development of Augustine's Philosophical Anthropology
Volume 6
New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris
With Indices on Helga Köhler, C. Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius: BriefeBuch I
Volume 7
The Ladder of Prayer and the Ship of Stirrings
The Praying Self in Late Antique East Syrian Christianity
Volume 22
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