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The Literary Artistry of Terentianus Maurus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2022

Tom Keeline
Tom Keeline*
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis
*
tkeeline@wustl.edu
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Abstract

Terentianus Maurus, a North African writing probably in the third century a.d., bequeathed to posterity a preface and three polymetric poems: De litteris, De syllabis and De metris. The poems’ titles reflect their content, the first two covering the pronunciation of letters and syllables and the third discussing the details of a bewildering array of metres. Unpromising subject matter for poetry? On the contrary. Terentianus Maurus uses this raw material to display his extraordinary poetic skill, while also conveying useful technical information. This paper first examines the programmatic preface to his poems, which is studded with intertextual gems and shines with every kind of literary polish. It then turns to look at passages from the rest of Terentianus’ poetry to see how he puts the ideals of his preface into poetic practice. The paper aims to show that Terentianus Maurus is not, or not just, a grammarian, but rather a consummate literary artist in the tradition of learned didactic verse.

Keywords

Terentianus Maurusdidactic poetryintertextualitywordplaymetregrammar
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 112 , November 2022 , pp. 143 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

*Preliminary versions of this article were presented at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies, the University of Iowa and the Oxford Philological Society; the present version is much the better for audience members’ suggestions. I thank also the anonymous readers for JRS, who improved every aspect of my argument and delivered their reports with miraculous speed, as well as the Journal's editor, Peter Thonemann, a model of efficiency and good cheer. Finally, thanks to my colleagues Kate Wilson, who discussed these ideas with me when they were just forming, and Tim Moore, who has read and commented at every stage from conference abstract to near-final paper.

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