7 - The Miscellanist’s Trope of Deselecting Titles and Clement’s Conversion of Imagery

Summary

Classical miscellanists invented the trope of listing in a preface other people's miscellany titles, which they were not choosing for their own work. By giving this impressionistic snapshot of a book culture, they could position their own work in relation to Greek and Roman literary heritage. Clement adapted this trope to name Hellenised points of entry into the Christian imaginary of his literary project. In the preface to Str. VI, he listed Meadows, Helicons, Honeycombs, and Peploi as titles of other people's works. These name significant domains in Clement's own imagery; if sophisticated readers trace his networks of imagery, they will find that these all begin as pagan motifs, but as they move through the Protrepticus, Paedagogus and Stromateis, they are gradually recast and reinvented as Christian. It may be that the Didaskalos evoked in the preface to Paed. I works in a similar way, as a miscellanistic non-title that highlights a domain of imagery in Clement's work, by which people are drawn closer to God.