Imitation in Medieval Latin Literature

This paper uses the exordium of the Alexandreis as a test case to argue for a new theoretical model for reading postclassical imitation of classical poets. Traditionally, scholars, who have analyzed Walter’s debts to classical poets, have visualized a direct conversation between two authors: Walter and the classical poet being discussed (Christensen, Wiener, Ratkowitsch, Zwierlein).

Archpoet is the assigned title to a 12^th century author who belongs to the so-called Goliardic movement of the Medieval Latin literature. From his writings, ten poems were preserved; one of them, which begins with the verse Archicancellarie, vir discrete mentis (4 in Eberle’s edition, 5 in Langosch’s) deserves notice for its metapoetical and “über-generic” character.

Sometime after 829, the poet Ermoldus Nigellus composed three poems: two short verse-epistles to Pepin, King of Aquitaine, and a lengthy panegyric dedicated to Louis the Pious, Pepin’s father. All three demonstrate the author’s ready knowledge of Classical and Late Antique poetry, Scripture, and contemporary literary sources that range from pop songs to intellectual works available to a jobbing poet in the court of a sub-king.

In November 417, a day after departing from Rome on the voyage described in his fragmentary De reditu, Rutilius Namatianus and his fellow travellers arrived at the port of Centumcellae (mod. Civitavecchia), and traveled three miles inland to the Thermae Taurinae (mod. Terme Taurine). These hot springs, Rutilius says, are so called because tradition holds that a bull was first to unearth them.