The Wound and The Word: Tracing Trauma in Rutilius Namatianus' De Reditu Suo and Sidonius Apollinaris' Epistulae

Abstract

This thesis adopts literary trauma theory as an interpretive framework for analysing textual responses to the decline and fall of Rome. It focuses on two late antique authors, Rutilius Namatianus and Sidonius Apollinaris, who respectively witnessed the Gothic sack of Rome (410 CE) and the fall of the empire (476 CE). Chapter One applies Cathy Caruth’s theory of ‘traumatic amnesia’ to Rutilius’ De Reditu Suo, reframing the epistemological, ideological and environmental eccentricities of the poem as symptoms of Rutilius’ inability to articulate the trauma of 410. Only through devices of literary representation can he communicate the trauma lurking beneath his gilded view of Roman supremacy. Chapter Two applies Joshua Pederson’s competing theory of ‘speaking trauma’ to a selection of Sidonius’ later Epistulae. Unlike Rutilius, Sidonius is ready and willing to grapple with traumatic experience in real time, mounting a stubborn defence against the erosion of his culture by the barbaric Visigoths. Chapter Three examines how both authors combat the trauma of their times by surrounding themselves with aristocratic literary communities which perpetuate and immortalise Romanitas. In this way, both Rutilius and Sidonius ‘work through’ their traumatic experiences.