Al di là dell’epitalamio: precettistica e forma elegiaca nel carme di Paolino di Nola per le nozze di Giuliano e Tizia

A formal and structural analysis of Paulinus’epithalamium point out a strong didactic and parenetic component, especially in the sequence dedicated to the criticism of women’s clothing and make-up, which explains the general affinities with the philosophical and moralistic tradition but, above all, the impressive contacts with the so-called “didactic elegy”: in both epithalamium and didactic elegies, in fact, topoi are employed to suggest a right moral behaviour. Elegiac couplets could therefore provide, to the poet who is teaching a Christian way of life, a meter which in the poetic tradition had already proved useful for didactic purposes and the parenesis.