Re-imagining the epic at Villa Falconieri
From 20–22 June Professor Gwynne joined historians, classicists, and historians of education at the Accademia Vivarium Novum’s conference Educazione e cultura nella prima età moderna, held in the sixteenth-century Villa Falconieri overlooking the Alban Hills. His paper, “Refashioning the Heroic: Jesuit theories of epic,” traced how Jesuit poets re-tooled Virgilian narrative to promote missionary ideals, beginning with Francesco Benci’s Quinque Martyres (1591) and culminating in Famiano Strada’s classroom commentary of 1617. By recovering these pedagogical texts, Gwynne shows that the Society of Jesus forged a new kind of epic aimed not at empire-building but at spiritual conquest - portable, pious, and designed for “pocket-size” inspiration.
Conference proceedings will be published later this year.
A landmark English edition of Gambara’s Caprarola
Hot on the heels of the conference, Brill has announced “Lorenzo Gambara’s Caprarola and On Poetic Composition: Text, Translation and Commentary” (Jesuit Studies series #47), co-authored and translated by Professor Gwynne and Patrick M. Owens (Colgate University).
Scheduled for release in July 2025, the 390-page volume offers the first English translation of Gambara’s extensively revised 1581 description of the Farnese palace at Caprarola, paired with a newly attributed treatise – attributed to the Jesuit polymath Antonio Possevino - urging poets to abandon pagan themes for Christian subjects. The book situates both texts within the Counter-Reformation’s broader effort to align classical eloquence with Catholic devotion.
Both the Frascati paper and the Brill volume illuminate how early modern Jesuits appropriated classical genres to serve new religious and cultural agendas. “Whether in Rome, Frascati, or Caprarola, Jesuit writers consistently re-cast antiquity’s heroes as spiritual exemplars,” Professor Gwynne observes. “Understanding that strategy helps us see Renaissance literature - and its educational settings - through a much wider global lens.”
Scholarship that feeds the classroom
Professor Gwynne’s research feeds directly into AUR’s Liberal Arts curriculum, offering students first-hand exposure to primary sources, philological method, and the global circulation of ideas. President Scott Sprenger noted, “Paul’s work exemplifies AUR’s commitment to inquiry-driven teaching: our students learn how classical learning was re-deployed from Goa to Caprarola, and why that story still matters.”