Greek and Latin miniature epic in Late Antiquity : a comparative and generic approach

The main aim of my work is to demonstrate differences and similarities between Greek and Latin miniature epic of Late Antiquity and to place them in a wider cultural context. Moreover, I specify distinctive features of the epyllion genre while interpreting each poem. The first chapter provides an analysis of the historical background of the epoch. I also present features of Greek and Latin literature of Late Antiquity, which allows a better understanding of analyzed poems. Besides, I summarize biographies of discussed authors and the manuscript tradition of their texts, along with the most important editions and comments. Among Greek poets, I take into account Colluthus, Musaeus and Nonnus of Panopolis; among Latin poets, I analyze Dracontius, Reposianus and the anonymous author of Aegritudo Perdicae. For this reason, I describe the cultural life in Carthage and Egypt at the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries. In the second chapter I try to find an answer to the question concerning the genological problem: is epyllion a literary genre in antiquity and were ancient poets aware of creating a separate genre? Therefore, I summarize the history of research on the miniature epic and discuss epyllions created in earlier epochs. The third chapter, as the main part of my dissertation, contains a lexical, compositional and stylistic analysis of selected texts, as well as their broad interpretation. Individual subsections contain an explanation of the following issues, not yet explored so extensively in late antique epyllions: presence and role of the narrator; ideological dimension of poems; sources of poetic inspiration, based on the analysis of the proem; intergenericity within the epyllion structure; reinterpretation of myths; original characters. In the last subsection I also describe the epyllion as included in the long epic. I base my analysis on the structure of the Dionysiaca by Nonnus of Panopolis. The fourth chapter includes a summary of all my considerations and conclusions drawn from observed similarities and differences between Greek and Latin epyllions