Citation

Sisul AC. Athenaeum 2020; 2020(2): 507-518.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

De Verbi Incarnatione features a speech in which God addresses his Son, urging him to become incarnate in the mortal world (w. 35-54). The first verses present many references to the prelude of Nisus and Euryalus∗ disastrous mission. Thus the Virgilian subtext portrays a pes-simistic motif: The death of youth. However, the Christian author counters the Virgilian negativity, adding a fortunate prophetic speech, extracted from a different scene of the Aeneid. The shift from pessimism to optimism conveys a positive meaning to the death of Christ. The same strategy reappears when the author juxtaposes a reference to the suicide of a young Virgilian shepherd with a series of verses extracted from the renowned fourth eclogue and its optimistic prophecy. As a result, the cento combines the memory of a literary and cultural tradition with the need to com-municate the precepts of Christianity. The final product is something clearly alter ab illo. © 2020 Universita degli Studi di Pavia, Facolta di Lettere. All rights reserved.

Language: es