Dr. Adam Trettel

Website: https://independent.academia.edu/AdamTrettel

Research Interests:

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (c. 348-405) and his reception; Latin lexicography; Augustine of Hippo

Biography

My doctoral dissertation was published as a book in 2018 "Desires in Paradise. An Interpretative Study of Augustine, City of God 14" (Brill/Schöningh, 2018) which dealt with Augustine’s reception of classical and biblical texts, as well as his engagement with Cynicism and middle-Late Platonism. I argued that Augustine developed an innovative approach to the will and emotions, drawing heavily on biblical anthropology. Following my PhD I was a College Fellow and then Lecturer in the Department of the Classics at Harvard University, with a focus on late-ancient and medieval Latin. I continued to research Augustine, and began a new project on late-antique poetry. From 2021-22, I composed articles at the Thesaurus linguae Latinae in Munich, and from 2022-24 was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the University of Leipzig, hosted by Marcus Deufert, with the project "Lucretius in the poetry of Prudentius".

Project Abstract

My project investigates two of Prudentius' poems, Liber cathemerinon 11-12. Written in iambic dimeter and responding to the hymns of Ambrose, the poems celebrate the holidays of Christmas (cathemerinon 11) and Epiphany (cathemerinon 12). I will author an article that compares Prudentius' concept of time and understanding of the calendar with comparison to Ovid, Fasti I, on the Roman month of January. My project draws on research by Anke Walter, a former Einstein Center Chronoi fellow, as well as on earlier scholarship by Adolf von Harnack and Hermann Usener.