About this ebook
By close engagement with both traditional and contemporary approaches to ancient Christian literature, Latin Christian Writers in Late Antiquity and their Texts seeks to delineate a historiographical problem, at the same time rendering patristics as part of the subject-matter of a new literary history. After preliminary essays marking out the field, the volume is organized in three sections by authors, forms of discourse, and disciplines. Released from the theological discipline of patristics, the writings of the church fathers have in recent decades become the common property of students of early Christianity, late antiquity and the classical tradition. In principle, they are now no more (nor less) than sources, documents and literary texts like others from their period and milieux. Yet when replaced in the longer history of Western textual and literary practices, the collective literary oeuvre of Latin clerics, monks and ascetic freelances of the Later Roman Empire may still seem to occupy a place of decisive, if not canonical importance. How does one now account for the abiding formativeness of Latin Christian writing of the fourth and fifth centuries CE? What demands does such writing lay on a modern history of literature? These are the questions asked here, in view of a new literary history of patristic texts.
About the author
Mark Vessey is Associate Professor and has the Canada Research Chair in Literature/Christianity and Culture in the Department of English at University of British Columbia, Canada.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
