CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2001
| Author | Lucie Dolezalova |
|---|---|
| Title | Food, Fight and, Familiarity with the Bible: A Textual Analysis of the Cena Cypriani |
| Summary | The title is an attempt to briefly allude to the specific character of the obscure Latin text called Cena Cypriani. The Cena Cypriani, written probably in the second half of the fourth century and surviving in 54 manuscripts, cannot easily be categorised. The text not only combines elements of many different Late Antique genres and literary types, but also seems to involve contradictory elements. Being based on the Bible, it has been interpreted both as allegory and as parody, as a religious text and as a blasphemy. Containing catalogues with Biblical characters and their attributions, it has been called both a mnemotechnic help or aide de memoire and an exertitium ingenii. Being very entertaining, it has been perceived both as a youthful lapse of a Church Father and as a playful joke. Baffled by such strong disagreement among scholars, I considered all possible contexts where the Cena Cypriani could be placed, I translated the text into English, and studied each of the 472 Biblical allusions again. Based on this analysis, I concentrated on the author’s methods: the choice of the sources, the strategies of attributing, tendencies in cataloguing and in creating the plot. It turned out that the author chooses primarily the most exciting, popular and plot-dense stories from the Bible—violent and miraculous events and tricks, as well as scenes where eating and drinking are involved. There are various types of attributions—some are based on association, some on implication, wordplay or metaphor. Some are closely tied to the text of the Bible, others are distant from it. The attributions are distributed on many levels—some are familiar, others surprising, some are easy to recognise, others difficult or almost impossible. The catalogues seem to be organised without a specific strategy; only a few tendencies can be detected. The plot connecting the individual catalogues is rather weak—it depends solely on the character of the king, the organiser of the feast. This can be perceived as another allusion. After the analysis of the author’s methods, I return to the problem of the literary genres and types, and re-evaluate their importance for the Cena Cypriani. I conclude that the author includes contradictions and ambiguities on purpose, and the result is closest to the exertitium ingenii. I propose the hypothesis that the purpose of the whole is both to amuse and to educate, in the broader sense of the word—to draw the reader’s or listener’s attention to the Bible—and that the audience was a larger public within an elite: educated people familiar with the Bible. But this question, together with many others, remains open. The study could be a starting point for further research on medieval rewritings of the Cena Cypriani. Comparing these versions with the original could provide useful conclusions about the shifts between the Late Antique and medieval idea of education through entertainment, interpretations, and transmission of the texts. |
| Supervisor | Karsai, Gy. Klaniczay, G. Jaritz, G. |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2001/dolezalova_lucie.pdf |
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