LAT 340 - Vergil and the Christian Poets

Prerequisite, LAT 201. This course examines the global influence of the Roman poet Vergil on the Christian poetic imagination from Late Antiquity to the Modern Era. We will devote the first half of the semester to reading Vergil’s Fourth “Eclogue”, known since its Christian reception as the ‘Messianic Eclogue’ due to its perceived prediction of the birth of Christ, along with passages from “Aeneid” Book 6, whose depiction of the underworld continues to influence Christian notions of Hell. In the second half of the semester we will examine Vergil’s impact on the development of a Christian poetics by reading works such as the “centos “of Proba, poems made up entirely of half-lines taken from the Vergilian opus and recombined to narrate stories from Scripture, and the martyr poems of the poet Prudentius, which rely on the epic language of the Aeneid to elevate the heroes of the Church. We will continue to explore Vergil’s legacy in the Christian poetry of the Middle Ages through to the Modern Era by reading selections from Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (in English translation) and Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, works indebted to the “Aeneid” in subject matter and structure. We will end the course by looking at recent allusions to Vergil in the work of poets from around the globe who are writing in an increasingly secularized world and ask whether a de-Christianized reception of the poet brings us any closer to an original context. (Offered as needed.) 3 credits