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dc.contributor.authorLudlow, Morwenna
dc.date.accessioned2014-07-07T13:00:00Z
dc.date.issued2014-08
dc.description.abstractThe idea that Gregory of Nyssa’s work On Virginity was a piece of advocacy for Basil the Great’s ascetic programme has recently been challenged from various perspectives. Here I examine Gregory’s creation of a particular authorial voice through his manipulation of certain stock themes from classical literature on marriage; I show that De virginitate employs a range of reference hitherto unrecognised by scholars and is not just artful but poetic. By challenging boundaries between rhetoric, philosophy and poetry, and the useful and beautiful in the arts (boundaries which modern readers impose on ancient texts), I suggest that Gregory explicitly defends both virginity and marriage; he also implicitly gives a theological defence of his use of artful rhetoric. On Virginity is thus as much about theological poetics as it is about either marriage or celibacy.en_GB
dc.format.mediumPaper & online
dc.identifier.citationVol. 79, Issue 3, pp. 219 - 240en_GB
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/0021140014527660
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10871/15157
dc.language.isoenen_GB
dc.publisherSage Publicationsen_GB
dc.relation.urlhttp://www.sagepublications.com/en_GB
dc.subjectepithalamiumen_GB
dc.subjectGregory of Nyssaen_GB
dc.subjectmarriageen_GB
dc.subjectvirginityen_GB
dc.subjectrhetoricen_GB
dc.subjectpoeticsen_GB
dc.titleUseful and beautiful: a reading of Gregory of Nyssa’s 'On Virginity' and a proposal for understanding early Christian literatureen_GB
dc.typeArticleen_GB
dc.date.available2014-07-07T13:00:00Z
dc.identifier.issn0021-1400
exeter.place-of-publicationEire
dc.descriptionpublication-status: Publisheden_GB
dc.descriptiontypes: Articleen_GB
dc.description© 2014 by Sage Publicationsen_GB
dc.identifier.eissn1752-4989
dc.identifier.journalIrish Theological Quarterlyen_GB


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