Evangelium versificatum or How to put the Gospel into verses
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| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Until the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, Christian literature had not produced a poem which would be qualitatively comparable to Homer´s Iliad or Vergil´s Aeneid. A Christian of Hispanic origin, Aquilinus Iuvencus, had, however, decided to match the most famous of the pagan poets in their own genre which resulted in his versification of the New Testament Gospels known as Evangeliorum libri quattuor, the first biblical epic of the ancient times. What was the transformation that the original text of the Gospel underwent during the process of versification? Was it exposed to embellishment or simplification? Can we speak about word-to-word poetization or free-thinking paraphrasing? These are the very questions which are going to be answered by close stylistic comparison between the parables of the Last Judgement in their original prosaic form and their later poetic adaptation produced by Iuvencus. |
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