CHARLET, J.-L., — La création poétique dans le Cathemerinon de Prudence.

Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1982. 232p. Sewn. Signature on free endpaper. Pages yellowed due to paper quality. A lot of pencil markings, underlinings and annotations Series: Collection d'Études Anciennes. ‘Charlet’s detailed study of the ‘Cathemerinon Liber’ comes as a welcome addition to the commentaries of W. Evenepoel (…) and M. Van Assendelft (…). C.’s work is more thorough and more suggestive than that of his predecessors. After a brief discussion of the book’s unusual Greek title., its precedents and meaning, C. Devotes eight introductory pages to a valuable general history of the hymn. This provides background vital to any study of Prudentius’ lyric poetry and C. gives due weight both to the pagan tradition of the hymn and the relatively late entry into the Christian writing of the Latin West. Crucial here is an awareness of the important role of Hilary and Ambrose as Latin hymnographers. In the first chapter of Part I (…), C. analyses the contents of each poem. In the second, he turns to the central problem of the collection’s unity. He sees it as a tightly knit whole, bound together both at the aesthetic and at the spiritual level. (…) Chapter Three (…) explores the internal structure of the hymns, which C. sees as cyclic, revolving in general around five distinct parts.(…) Central to his scheme is the biblical narrative which is developed to a greater or lesser extent in each poem. It is Prudential’ evolution of this feature which C. Sees as particularly novel and to which he devotes the second part of his study. (…)[There is - ND] a wealth of detail about Prudentius’ metrical and linguistic practices, or to its insights into the meaning of the collection both for the poet himself and contemporary Christian literate. (…) C. Must be right in concluding about the collection that it was written to form the basis for personal meditation on the liturgical prayer from which the poems take their inspiration. (…) The whole study combines thorough scholarship with freshness of approach and gives a convincing reappraisal of an important and novel collection.’ (A.-M. PALMER in The Classical Review (New Series), 1984, pp.328-329).