Tarda antichità anacronica. Tra storiografia e panegirico
Abstract
This article explores late antique literary culture by making use of a theoretical paradigm recently formulated by the art historians A. Nagel and C. Wood in their book Anachronic Renaissance (New York 2010). Though the period treated in the book, the Renaissance, is very different from late antiquity and though it concentrates on artistic productions, in my view the concept of anachronicity (which is not the same as anachronism) may be applied with profit to the study of late antique texts. In particular, certain key concepts such as the replaceability of the artistic or literary work, imitation of works by themselves, and belatedness, which every work and text inevitably bears in itself, can illuminate some of the aspects of late antique literary production that are most interesting, but which are generally neglected or treated in a superficial way precisely because they are regarded as either secondary or not at all original. These concepts can offer a lens through which to read virtually any late antique text, but here we concentrate on just two works, the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus and the corpus of the Panegyrici Latini, for one reason above all: both belong to literary genres, historiography and panegyric, which maintain a relation with the past that can be defined as structural. While this is obvious in historiography, in the Panegyrici the sacred value of the past is actualized and projected onto the present time, of which the laudandus, that is, the emperor, is the perfect expression. At the same time, the past itself, vetustas, is presented in the guise of myth, thus undergoing a process of fictionalization which bears elements that destabilize the historiographic discourse, with which the genre of panegyric enters into open competition. In the work of Ammianus, which occupies a unique position within Latin historiography, traces of this same discourse can be identified, indicating a crisis in historiographical representation. The paradigm of anachronicity throws new light on the close relation of the late antique text to the literary tradition of the past, which, it is true, has already been widely investigated, but anachronicity makes it one of its most original and surprising traits. Anachronicity reestablishes the value of belatedness in such a way that the very definition of ‘late antiquity’ takes on a new meaning, precisely because ‘late’ is not limited to defining its chronology, but rather assigns it a value that is fundamentally aesthetic.
Abstract
This article explores late antique literary culture by making use of a theoretical paradigm recently formulated by the art historians A. Nagel and C. Wood in their book Anachronic Renaissance (New York 2010). Though the period treated in the book, the Renaissance, is very different from late antiquity and though it concentrates on artistic productions, in my view the concept of anachronicity (which is not the same as anachronism) may be applied with profit to the study of late antique texts. In particular, certain key concepts such as the replaceability of the artistic or literary work, imitation of works by themselves, and belatedness, which every work and text inevitably bears in itself, can illuminate some of the aspects of late antique literary production that are most interesting, but which are generally neglected or treated in a superficial way precisely because they are regarded as either secondary or not at all original. These concepts can offer a lens through which to read virtually any late antique text, but here we concentrate on just two works, the Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus and the corpus of the Panegyrici Latini, for one reason above all: both belong to literary genres, historiography and panegyric, which maintain a relation with the past that can be defined as structural. While this is obvious in historiography, in the Panegyrici the sacred value of the past is actualized and projected onto the present time, of which the laudandus, that is, the emperor, is the perfect expression. At the same time, the past itself, vetustas, is presented in the guise of myth, thus undergoing a process of fictionalization which bears elements that destabilize the historiographic discourse, with which the genre of panegyric enters into open competition. In the work of Ammianus, which occupies a unique position within Latin historiography, traces of this same discourse can be identified, indicating a crisis in historiographical representation. The paradigm of anachronicity throws new light on the close relation of the late antique text to the literary tradition of the past, which, it is true, has already been widely investigated, but anachronicity makes it one of its most original and surprising traits. Anachronicity reestablishes the value of belatedness in such a way that the very definition of ‘late antiquity’ takes on a new meaning, precisely because ‘late’ is not limited to defining its chronology, but rather assigns it a value that is fundamentally aesthetic.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- List of Abbreviations IX
- Introduction 1
-
I. Thinking the past: categories and structures of the antique
- Mankind’s Past: Evolution or Progress? 17
- Semantica senecana del primitivo 27
- Quando i romani ‘scoprirono’ gli armeni: il re Tigran e la tigre (Varrone, ling. 5.100) 39
- The past in Pausanias: its narration, structure and relationship with the present 49
- Tarda antichità anacronica. Tra storiografia e panegirico 65
-
II. Functionalizations of the past
- Livy’s antiquities: rethinking the distant past in the Ab urbe condita 87
- Princeps et res publica: Des multiples façons de se référer au passé 111
- Apud antiquos. La ricostruzione dell’antichità nell’insegnamento di Poliziano 131
- I nuovi antichi. Classicismo e petrarchismo fra Bembo e Tasso 155
-
III. Veteres: the relation to past authorities
- The Burden of Antiquity in Horace and in the Dialogus de oratoribus 175
- Fronto’s and Gellius′ veteres 199
- Vetustas e antiquitas, veteres e antiqui nei grammatici latini 213
- Quando i giuristi diventarono ‘veteres’. Augusto e Sabino, i tempi del potere e i tempi della giurisprudenza 249
- Convertire l’enciclopedia: Agostino e Varrone 303
- Index Nominum et Rerum Potiorum 319
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- List of Abbreviations IX
- Introduction 1
-
I. Thinking the past: categories and structures of the antique
- Mankind’s Past: Evolution or Progress? 17
- Semantica senecana del primitivo 27
- Quando i romani ‘scoprirono’ gli armeni: il re Tigran e la tigre (Varrone, ling. 5.100) 39
- The past in Pausanias: its narration, structure and relationship with the present 49
- Tarda antichità anacronica. Tra storiografia e panegirico 65
-
II. Functionalizations of the past
- Livy’s antiquities: rethinking the distant past in the Ab urbe condita 87
- Princeps et res publica: Des multiples façons de se référer au passé 111
- Apud antiquos. La ricostruzione dell’antichità nell’insegnamento di Poliziano 131
- I nuovi antichi. Classicismo e petrarchismo fra Bembo e Tasso 155
-
III. Veteres: the relation to past authorities
- The Burden of Antiquity in Horace and in the Dialogus de oratoribus 175
- Fronto’s and Gellius′ veteres 199
- Vetustas e antiquitas, veteres e antiqui nei grammatici latini 213
- Quando i giuristi diventarono ‘veteres’. Augusto e Sabino, i tempi del potere e i tempi della giurisprudenza 249
- Convertire l’enciclopedia: Agostino e Varrone 303
- Index Nominum et Rerum Potiorum 319
