Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College Dissertations and Theses 2017 The Latin Controversial Dialogues of Late Antiquity Charles Nestor Kuper Bryn Mawr College,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.brynmawr.edu/dissertations Part of the Classics Commons Custom Citation Kuper, Charles N. "The Latin Controversial Dialogues of Late Antiquity." PhD diss., Bryn Mawr College, 2017. This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. https://repository.brynmawr.edu/dissertations/170 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Latin Controversial Dialogues of Late Antiquity By Charles Nestor Kuper May 2017 Submitted to the Faculty of Bryn Mawr College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies Abstract This dissertation addresses how the literary genre of the philosophical dialogue was used by Latin authors in late antiquity (300–700 AD) to negotiate ongoing anti-heretical debates. ❧ Traditional scholarship on this topic has focused mostly on the Greek dialogues. When the Latin material received attention, it was read in terms of its appropriation of and deviation from classical models. More recent scholarship has acted as a corrective to this model, and one key question that has emerged is whether true dialogue persisted into late antiquity at all. Some scholars have provocatively suggested that the democratic aims of the dialogue are inconsistent with the totalitarian discourse characterized by the Christian Roman Empire. Is late antiquity, in fact, the end of the dialogue? ❧ This thesis is an answer to this ongoing discussion.