"Dicendi arte nova parem vetustis": la celebrazione dei nuovi auctores nella poesia tardolatina

Late Latin literature is characterized by a strong ‘scholastic’ cultural substratum, founded on the study of a centuries-old tradition and a corpus of exemplary texts of undisputed authority, and by a strong propensity for metaliterary discourse, from which not even poetry escapes. This paper aims to describe some of the ways in which late Latin poets endorse other contemporary writers or promote themselves against the backdrop of that venerable and ubiquitous tradition, which provides the yardstick by which new literature is evaluated.