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21 - Classical genres in Christian guise; Christian genres in classical guise

from A - LITERARY GUIDE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Frances Young
Edited by
Frances Young ,
Lewis Ayres  and
Andrew Louth
Assisted by
Augustine Casiday
Frances Young
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Lewis Ayres
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Andrew Louth
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Augustine Casiday
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

Often designated the ‘Golden Age of Patristic Literature’, the fourth and fifth centuries provide us with a mass of material which carries weighty literary and theological significance. For this was the period which later ages looked back to as that in which the authoritative ‘Fathers of the Church’ set out the faith handed down to them, and there is an important sense in which this determined the transmission of earlier texts as well as those originating in this period. It was also a time in which classical genres appeared in Christian guise, and Christian genres achieved their classic form.

There are, of course, discernible continuities and discontinuities with what has gone before. These can best be focused by noting two determinative moments for the character of Christian literature. The first marks the beginning of the period: the final attempt to eradicate Christianity followed by Constantine’s patronage of the Church. The second is the reaction to Julian’s attempt to reverse what had happened and construct a revived paganism sufficiently robust to challenge the power of this new kind of religion with credal foundation and institutional scaffolding. The latter will throw retrospective light on the former.

Keywords

Constantinian revolutionChristianityEusebiusapologeticsChristian rhetoricianspatristic literature
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature , pp. 247 - 258
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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