Allegorical language and christian epic poetry
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Abstract
The allegorical methods of interpretation, already used in the Greco-Roman literary tradition, were adapted to the Jewish Scriptures during the early centuries of the Christian era. The gradual emergence of Christian exegesis in this period depends on broader and deeper perspective changes associated with three intersecting movements: Jewish, Platonic, and Gnostic. In this period, under the influence of Christianity, there was also the diffusion of allegory in epic and allegorical interpretation in non-epic genres in the Christian context or at least in contexts influenced by Christianity. Considering that, this paper presents the work Psychomachia, by Prudentius (348-405 BC), a Christian allegorical epic poem that describes a series of battles between virtues and vices around the domain of the human soul, that is, human life translated as tragic struggle between good and evil. The practice of introducing narrative characters into the epic, whose names represent abstract qualities and whose actions can be compared to the actions of heroes or gods, was a common epic motive explored in Greco-Roman literature.
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