Gallus Reborn: A Study of the Diffusion and Reception of Works Ascribed to Gaius Cornelius Gallus

Gallus Reborn is the first comprehensive study of the publication history and reception of the works that have been attributed to Gaius Cornelius Gallus, first canonical Roman elegist, friend of Virgil, and ‘missing link’ in Roman literary history.

Gallus was a widely read and frequently imitated author from the Renaissance onwards, when he overcame the disadvantage of having no surviving works by putting his name to a substantial body of pseudepigrapha: misattributed, faked or forged poems. This monograph asks what Gallus was like, during that phase of his existence; how was he read, and by whom; and what impact did he have on literary history?

Combining close readings of the texts with a comparative overview of their wider reception, Gallus Reborn will interest scholars and advanced students of classical reception, Neo-Latin, comparative literature and early modern studies.

Paul White is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Leeds. His research focuses on Latin poetry and its reception, with a particular focus on Renaissance humanism; publications include articles on poetry, education, authorship and print culture in Latin and vernacular contexts, and books on the early modern reception of Ovid’s Heroides (Columbus, 2009), and on the classical editions and commentaries of the Paris-based printer and author Jodocus Badius Ascensius (Oxford, 2013).