CANCELLED J. Pucci Lecture

CANCELLED

“Ambiguity and Order in the Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus”

A lecture by Joseph Pucci, Associate Professor of Classics, Program in Medieval Studies, and Comparative Literature, Brown University

This presentation explores how Venantius Fortunatus exploits ambiguity in Carmen 3.26 in order to write simultaneously for a public and a private audience, and validate a notion of friendship as we understand it, that is, as a personal relationship predicated on affection and generosity. Because ambiguity connects counterpoised public and private spaces, this poem reveals the power of friendship’s bonds by framing private attachments against the larger fabric of public acclaim, enabling the affiliations of friendship to be seen as equivalent to the grandest of things – God, Christ, the soul, nature.