Jerome, Vita Malchi: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary

Gray, C. (2015) Jerome, Vita Malchi: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary. Series: Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford University Press: Oxford. ISBN 9780198723721

Abstract

Includes an improved Latin text of Jerome's Vita Malchi with an original English translation<p></p> Provides a comprehensive commentary which places the text in its historical and intellectual context<p></p> Offers a customized map which clearly presents the locations mentioned in the text<p></p> This volume offers a full analysis of one of the more intriguing works by a figure who is central to our understanding of Late Antiquity and early Christianity: the translator, exegete, and controversialist Jerome (c.347-419/20AD). The neglected text of the Vita Malchi - or, to use Jerome's title, the Captive Monk - recounts the experiences of Malchus, a monk abducted by nomadic Saracens on the Eastern fringe of the fourth-century Roman Empire, in what today is the border region between southern Turkey and Syria. Most of this short, vivid, and fast-paced narrative is recounted by Malchus in the first person.<p></p> The volume's introduction provides background information on the author, Jerome, and the historical and linguistic context of the Life, as well as detailed discussion of the work's style and its reception of earlier Christian and classical literature, ranging from its relationship with comedy, epic, and the ancient novel to the Apocryphal Apostolic Acts and martyr narratives. An exposition of the manuscript evidence is then followed by a new edition of the Latin text with an English translation, and a comprehensive commentary. The commentary explores the complex intertextuality of the work and provides readers with an understanding of its background, originality, and significance; it elucidates not only literary and philological questions but also points of ethnography and topography, and intellectual and social history.<p></p> Readership: Scholars and students interested in the development of the Latin literary language and narrative genres, particularly those emerging from Late Antiquity and early Christianity, and their philological, ethnographic, topographic, linguistic, and historical themes.<p></p>

• Item Type: Books
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Gray, Dr Christa
• Authors: Gray, C.
• Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BR Christianity; D History General and Old World > DE The Mediterranean Region. The Greco-Roman World; P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics; P Language and Literature > PA Classical philology
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Classics
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• ISBN: 9780198723721