G. has published an analysis on late antique literature under the suggestive title of Preposterous Poetics, in which he puts forward an interdisciplinary perspective to the poetics of this key era of transformation. G. is a well-known expert in Greek literature, both Classical and post-Classical, but, when approaching late antiquity, he chooses rather to offer a transversal reading of various literary traditions, not only Greek and Latin, but also Hebrew and Aramaic. This book obviously does not aim at providing a thorough guide to late antique poetics – deeply rooted in Neoplatonic philosophy, a clear emphasis on the visual culture and a sense of transcendence, in my view –, but rather to propose some new perspectives regarding the change of literary forms between the third and tenth centuries through themes, motifs and forms and diverse examples of how the classical poetic language is modified. The Kreuzung of the literary forms and genres is exemplified with the motif of exuberance, exaggeration and, so to speak, with a certain baroqueness avant la lettre. No wonder that G. puts Nonnus of Panopolis (fifth century), a poet who uses an exuberant Homeric language to reshape the Gospel of John, at the very core of his proposal: this excessive and somewhat ‘baroque’ poet, as he was defined by some scholars in the 1960s, provides a good symbol of the hybrid poetics of that time.
A methodological and explanatory preface presents the idea of ‘preposterous poetics’, starting with the example of Optatian's visual poetry, among some aesthetic and philosophical considerations. This is followed by a discussion of one of the favourite sub-genres of late antiquity, the ekphrasis, with reference to the writings of Paulinus of Nola, Claudian and the Palatine Anthology. The comparison between the classical epic and rhetoric use of ekphrasis with the late antique versions of it is shown in the epigrams dedicated to art: for example, the descriptions of the statues of the gymnasium of Zeuxippus by Christodorus of Coptus in the Palatine Anthology, commented on at a later point, exemplify this visual ‘obsession’. The second chapter focuses on the epyllion in relation to two late epic poets, also considered followers of the so-called ‘school of Nonnus’, Coluthus and Musaeus. G.'s choice makes us think of art and aesthetics on the frontier, in multicultural milieux such as Egypt – homeland of Nonnus, Christodorus, Coluthus and probably also Musaeus –, which define the visual turn of late antiquity. For G. one of the explanations to this lies in the shift of the aesthetic – but also ethical – perspective: from the global narrative to the miniature of the epyllion. The poetics denoted by Coluthus, for example, speak of what is hidden and what is shown in the poet's gaze. This epos vs epyllion dynamic is also important for the understanding of late antique art history, as J. Elsner has shown, when reflecting upon the relationship between works of minor art and large constructions. We could add also Paul the Silentiary's ekphraseis of the monumental Justinianian cathedral, perhaps the greatest visual tour de force of the period. The selection of scenes in an epyllion allows the poet to extrapolate particular themes and to silence causes, consequences or contexts. Something similar happens in the complex mosaic-structure of the Description of Hagia Sophia, its recitation and performance, as studied recently by E.M. van Opstall.
Next, G. deals with the incipit in late antique poetics: the comparison of the beginnings of emblematic works – not only Homer, but also the Gospels – with the way in which they are programmatically adapted in late antique poetics is certainly stimulating, especially when one focuses on the cosmological and philosophical beginning of Nonnus’ baroque rendering of Saint John's ‘Hymn to the Logos’ (p. 81), a true exegesis of Dionysian and Neoplatonic poetics, as the chapter rightly points out. Nonnus’ eclectic aesthetics is further examined in the following chapter, which bears the title of the book. The chapter focuses on the world of the Dionysiaca, arguably the most important Greek poem of late antiquity. G. does not attempt to analyse its full intention, structure or poetics, but – as in the case of the epyllia – deals rather with some key aspects of its poetics in terms of Neoplatonic mimesis and with its defying approach to myth: a bizarre erotic scene of necrophiliac rape in Book 35 of the poem leads the author into cultural-historical considerations about ‘the body and society’ – to paraphrase P. Brown's Foucauldian title – that, in a way, contain his central proposals for this redefinition of late antique poetics. It would have been useful to add some views on poetics and visuality as gathered by Brill's Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis (ed. D. Accorinti [2016]), which could reinforce G.'s view. In any case, the pages on the peculiarities of this mixed imagery between Homer, Classicism, Hellenism and Christianity, and the visual culture denoted by this poetics seem to me the book's most striking contribution.
The next chapter deals with the poetics of transformation and focuses on the novel known as Joseph and Aseneth with its hybrid approach to the Old Testament. This tradition is re-appropriated in a disputed Graeco-Jewish-Christian ideological discourse that shows well the Hegelian synthesis that late antique poetics entails. In comparison, G. places special emphasis on the Christian narrative of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, especially those of St Paul, with the novelistic treatment of the Christian heroine Thecla. The narrative of metanoia – conversion and its metaphors, cognitive or spatial – takes up old patterns of classical rhetoric and is examined here as a kind of literary leitmotif in the interstices between paganism, Judaism and Christianity (pp. 161–2). Chapter 6 focuses on another of the characteristic genres of late antiquity, biography, whether understood as the lives of holy men – also pagan, such as the lives of Neoplatonic sages – or in the form of the hagiographical novel. The tradition of the lives of sages, from the Hippocratic to the Rabbinic ones, contributes to shape a new literary canon for later times: here G. discusses the exemplary biographical texts of rabbinic Judaism, which show an interior and spiritual biography, but also have points of contact with an earlier biographical tradition. This is an interesting chapter about this literary metabolé at the end of antiquity. It is suggestive to think how it opens the way to the bestsellers of the Middle Ages, the lives and miracles of all kinds of saints and thaumaturgists, in Eastern and Western Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
This book succeeds in the multiple issues raised and in its intelligent and provocative appreciations and comparisons. G. evidences the interest of transversal readings between the cultures of late antiquity in a valuable contribution to current works on the poetics and aesthetics of this period (J. Elsner, M. Squire, G. Agosti, D. Gigli, J. Hernández Lobato and Ó. Prieto Dominguez, among others) that shows the liveliness of this field and the need for further research. The intellectualism, strangeness and hybridisation of late antique poetics certainly continue to impress us: G.'s reading suggests applying later categories to characterise it, such as baroqueness, and perhaps also avant-garde and postmodern trends, such as complex or hyper-constructed poetry, among others. This book emphasises the crisis of the classical genres and the contamination – intentional or unintentional – of the inherited forms. No doubt the crossing of borders and established limits must also be applied by the scholarship for research, beyond categories such as a Jewish, Pagan or Christian, in times of hybridisation, be it late antiquity and Middle Ages or Modernity. Both Hans Robert Jauss and Jacques Derrida would no doubt approve of this approach. How struck are we by the proximity of that poetics to our own! It implies not precisely a first Renaissance but perhaps a first querelle of the ancients and the moderns, as shown by the emulation and the desire to surpass all models in the late antique ideological conglomerate evoked by this thought-provoking volume.
