Monography profile

The period of Late Antiquity is an important milestone in the development of what we now call autobiographical writing. For the first time, a genealogical lineage can be reconstructed between forms of self-expression whose authors became increasingly aware of the distinction between the act of remembering and the act of writing. The book focuses on the literary works of Gregory of Nazianzus (329/330 - 389/390), the Cappadocian theologian and poet who is believed to have produced the first large-scale corpus of autobiographical poetry (nearly 7,000 verses) in Europe. The individual chapters address a range of issues related to self-representation in Late Antiquity: the methods of reflecting reality in art, the theological and philosophical frameworks of self-perception, poetic imagery and topoi. They also discuss Gregory’s oscillation between sincerity and didacticism, in line with the ancient conception of the individual as inseparable from society. The heart of the book, however, is the complete translation of Gregory’s autobiographical poetry as it appears in the 37th volume of Jacques-Paul Migne’s Patrologia Graeca (1857) and in more recent critical editions. The poems, rendered in a syllabotonic imitation of classical metres, are accompanied by indexes and extensive footnotes. The reader can thus enjoy an unconventional portrait of a saint who dared to combine lyrical lamentation with irony and even sarcasm.