Overview

Histories of Latin literature have often treated the period from the second to the seventh centuries as an epilogue to the main action – and yet the period includes such towering figures as Apuleius, Claudian, Prudentius, Augustine, Jerome, Boethius, and Isidore. The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature, with fifty chapters by forty-one scholars, is the first book to treat the immensely diverse literature of these six centuries together in such generous detail. The book shows authors responding to momentous changes, and sometimes shaping or resisting them: the rise of Christianity, the introduction of the codex book, and the end of the western Roman Empire. The contributors' accounts of late antique Latin literature do not shy away from controversy, but are always clear, succinct, and authoritative. Students and scholars wanting to explore unfamiliar areas of Late Antiquity will find their starting point here.

Full Product Details

Author:   Gavin Kelly (University of Edinburgh) ,  Aaron Pelttari (University of Edinburgh)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Weight:   0.500kg
ISBN:  

9781316510148

ISBN 10:   131651014
Pages:   938
Publication Date:   12 February 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

31. Sermons Hildegund Müller; 32. Historical writing Peter Van Nuffelen; 33. Chronicles Richard Burgess; 34. Biography Christa Gray; 35. Epistolography Jennifer Ebbeler; 36. Fiction Lucy Grig and Aaron Pelttari; 37. Legal writing, its forms, and influence Matthijs Wibier; 38. Philosophical writing, its forms, and influence Gerard O'Daly; 39. Technical and encyclopaedic literature Thorsten Fögen; 40. Epic Roger Green; 41. Epigram Nigel Kay; 42. The hymn Jean-Louis Charlet; VI. From the Last Years of the Western Empire to the Seventh Century: 43. Latin literature in early Byzantium Brian Croke; 44. Post-Roman Spain Carmen Codoñer; 45. Vandal and Byzantine North Africa Gregory Hays; 46. Ostrogothic and Byzantine Italy Ian Fielding; 47. Post-Roman Gaul Danuta Shanzer; 48. The post-Roman British Isles Michael Lapidge; 49. Literature and Romanitas in the post-Roman West Danuta Shanzer; Epilogue: the critical opportunity of later Latin literature in the twentieth century Mark Vessey.

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Author Information

GAVIN KELLY is Professor of Latin Literature and Roman History at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Ammianus Marcellinus: The Allusive Historian (Cambridge, 2008), Two Romes, edited with Lucy Grig (2012), and the Edinburgh Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris (2020). AARON PELTTARI is a Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of The Space That Remains: Reading Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity (2014) and The Psychomachia of Prudentius (2019).

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