Cento-Texts in the Making

Cento-texts represent an extreme case of intertextuality. In gathering material from different sources and weaving it together they form a patchwork, which is in constant dialogue with the literary tradition. The different components can take on new meanings and, at the same time, refer back to their original contexts. This interdisciplinary volume explores different cento-techniques from Antiquity to the present day. It focusses upon poetological reflections, which are often linked with or even inscribed in the usage of cento-techniques, and it takes into account varied understandings of cento-writings in the history of reception. The contributions compare different cultural traditions and approach cento-techniques from an aesthetical point of view. They examine questions of authorship, authorization and fragmentarization. They ask which metaphors or concepts are used to describe cento-techniques (e.g. bees, weaving, hooking, bricolage), and they discuss the poiesis of cento-texts in the Aristotelian sense of 'being made'.

The arrangement of the contributions in this volume is centonic insofar they are neither ordered chronologically nor according to specific topics. Rather, they form a patchwork, which invites the reader to compare different methodological approaches of dealing with cento-texts from Homer to Zong!


Table of Contents

MANUEL BAUMBACH
Selecting, Cutting and Weaving Texts: The Poiesis of Cento-Writings ...................... 9

ROWENA FOWLER
Ezra Pound's Rag-Bag: The Cantos as Cento ........................................................... 21

TIMO CHRISTIAN
Homerische Glossen und Rezeptionsniveaus in den Homerocentones ...................... 41

JULIA HEIDEKLANG
Hos Centones: Otto Brunfels' Herbarum vivae eicones (1530)
and Contrafayt Krëutterbuch (1532) ......................................................................... 63

MALI SKOTHEIM
Reading Environmental Devastation through Vergil's Eclogues in