Poetic Rewritings in Late Latin Antiquity and Beyond

Rewriting as the reworking of narrative material based on conscious strategies of composition plays a significant role in much of the Latin poetry of Late Antiquity. This book, resulting from the conference Riscritture poetiche nellOccidente latino tra tarda antichita e medioevo, which was held on 9-11 May 2022 at the Department of Human Sciences (DSU) of the University of LAquila, looks at the range of practices and purposes that inform this procedure, with particular regard to the processes of transcodification enacted in different historical and cultural contexts by the recasting of authoritative prose texts into a classicising poetic idiom. The contributions present a multifaceted approach to rewriting, cover a variety of authors, genres, and texts, and cast a glance also at medieval Latin literature. In short, the essays in this collection, by reflecting on the interpretative contribution of the critical category of rewriting, not only add further tesserae to the mosaic of literary studies on Late Latinity, they also invite to grasp the difference between secular and Christian rewritings.