J.Gómez Pallarès Autobiography as Meta-Literature: Epigraphy and Literature from Ancient to Medieval Times

In my essay I want try to join the different fields in which I have been working during the past years (Latin Poetry; Epigraphic Texts and the Relations between them) to apply my analysis to a type of texts that have not met, as far as I know, a specific interest. I am referring here to epitaphs from poets, which are conceived in the first person (they write their own epitaphic and commemorative text), and which are written both by authors with an aknowledged prestige and "high cultural awareness", and by authors who were not so lucky and ended up entrusting the stone with their immortality.

I intend to analyze these texts and their tradition in the Classical Latin (ancient and late- ancient) times, and in the Middle Ages. Moreover, I will emphasize their reading as autobiographical and meta-literary texts, that is, texts that contribute information about the poet's life, but that at the same time almost turn into "literary wills", because they also provide data about the poet's work.

To sum up, these texts also help the casual future reader to know more about the dead person's res gestae. Since the dead person is a poet, the work and the inscription (wether real or only literary!) becomes a legacy. I will also try to analyze wether there is a continuity between the Ancient and the Medieval world in this specific field. I will analyze and compare texts as, for instance, Hor., Carm., 3, 30 and Ov., Tr., 3, 3; or Anthologia Latina (edited by F.Bücheler and E.Lommatzsch), numbers 97 and 1516; or Corpus des Inscriptions de la France Médiévale, vol.18, number P.D. 36 and vol.20, number 99, always as autobiographical and poetological texts.