In this interview with authors from the Society for Renaissance Studies book series, we talk to Syrithe Pugh and reflect on her book Euhemerism and Its Uses: The Mortal Gods which was published in 2021. We discuss the difficulties of lost texts and fragments, acrostics found in the pseudo-Virgilian Culex and the importance of reading texts in their original languages.
- What drew you towards Renaissance and Early Modern studies in general and then intellectual history in particular?
I’ve always loved poetry, and when I reached the stage where one has to start specialising, I was drawn to the Renaissance mainly by wonderful poems. One of the things I love is when poets respond to each other’s poems, and I soon realised that, in this period, they were very often responding not just to their contemporaries’ poems, but also to the poetry of ancient Greece and Rome. This led me to study ancient Greek and Roman literature in more depth, and to become fascinated by the ways in which Renaissance writers understood and engaged with ideas born in societies so distant from their own.
- What were the key arguments in your book?
I’m going to answer this in a slightly round-about way, if that’s alright. I wanted to give both early modernists and the wider academic community a firmer grasp of what ‘Euhemerism’ means, and how the idea informed thought and literature across its long history. In my reading of literary criticism, I’d often come across mentions of it, and statements that it was widely accepted in the Renaissance. But the brief definitions given were often quite different, or even contradictory, and critics often seemed to be applying the term to quite different ideas. What made it all the more frustrating, and also intriguing, was that there didn’t seem to be any obvious ‘original source’ one could go and read, to get a clear and authoritative statement of what it was all about (in the way you can read Plato to learn about Platonic Ideas, say, or Aristotle to learn about catharsis). But the idea seemed so extraordinary and consequential (at least for anyone interested in the Renaissance reception of Greco-Roman mythology) that I wasn’t happy not knowing, and had to get to the bottom of it. Eventually I found my way to Marek Winiarczyk’s monograph and his edition of the Greek and Latin fragments (which are really more like testimonia, since all that remains is either a paraphrase or fragments of a translation of the original), and also to Nicholas Roubekas’ monograph. From there, I could see the further directions my research needed to go in. In the end I got to a place where I could say, with confidence, ‘Euhemerism is the idea that the Greek gods were actually men and women, who lived their lives among other men and women at some point in the past, and who ultimately died, as men and women always do, and were buried’, which became the first sentence of the book. But it was a slog getting there. I wanted to make it easier for others, so that what seems to me a really startling and momentous fact about Renaissance understanding of the Greek gods would get more consideration. But I was also aware that this idea was influential over two thousand years and across various disciplines. It seemed important to bring together a wide range of specialists, to get a broad view of the part it played in those different contexts. This led to a symposium, and ultimately the edited volume.
- How has your work on this topic developed since the book was published? Have any of your thoughts radically changed?
I haven’t done any more work directly on this topic since the book came out. Way leads on to way, you know. But my thoughts on it haven’t changed, as far as I’m aware, and I’m sure that what I’ve learned will colour my future work.
- What were the most fruitful sources you found in your research?
Boccaccio’s Genealogie deorum gentilium and Caxton’s translation of Raoul Le Fèvre’s Receuil des Histoires de Troie.
- What was the biggest obstacle to conducting your research?
Well, I suppose the fact that the whole idea which we call ‘Euhemerism’ ultimately flows from a lost text, the Sacred Inscription by Euhemerus of Messene, an otherwise unknown author. The bits we have (always at one remove) are scattered across a range of other ancient texts, and for each of those transmitting texts, one has to bear in mind questions of genre, context, and purpose. There are editions which collect all these fragments or testimonia together, but none with accompanying English translation (until Christiaan Caspers prepared his marvellous appendix for this book). So even getting to grips with the remains of the Sacred Inscription was a demanding process.
- If you could go back and start the book over again, is there anything you would change, either about the structure of the book itself or about your sources / methodology?
Nothing realistic! This is a very big topic (despite the fact that it’s so neglected), and any single volume treatment would always have to be selective. In an ideal world, there are many other periods and literatures I should have liked to include (for instance, the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Scandinavian reception). Oh—I suppose there is one little thing which would have been nice, if the publishers could have managed it: parallel text for the English translation of the testimonia, in the appendix. Most publishers shy away from this, nowadays, but it makes life so much easier for the reader.
- What are you working on now?
The pseudo-Virgilian Culex. I’ve translated it from the edition Spenser is believed to have used for ‘Virgils Gnat’, as an appendix to Richard Danson Brown and Elisabeth Chaghafi’s new edition of Spenser’s Complaints, in press at MUP. In the process, I became fascinated by the poem itself, as well as Spenser’s translation of it, so have ended up writing several articles on the subject, too.
- Do you have a favourite discovery or favourite fact from your research for this book or from what you are currently working on?
Ooooh…it’s hard to choose, but I guess I’d pick the acrostics I discovered in the Culex.
- If you were not an early modernist, is there any other period or history or historical field you would like to work on?
Yes, and I do! I like to think that we’re all working on what Shelley called ‘that great poem, which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world’. So I tend to wander at will, and so far, at least, nobody’s shot at me, or pointed angrily at a ‘keep out’ sign.
- Is it necessary to be able to read and understand Latin to work in Renaissance / early modern studies?
Well, it depends what you want to do. There are certainly things you can do without knowing Latin—after all, vernacular literatures flourished in the Renaissance, and only a minority of the population went to school. But whatever branch of early modern studies you work in, you’re probably going to find yourself confronted with Latin texts at some point, and you don’t want that to be a barrier constraining where you go with your research. I’d say that learning it is probably the most useful thing you can do. Certainly it’s indispensable for the sort of research I do myself.
- If you could instantly acquire one skill or ability to help your research, what would it be?
I’d definitely go for a babel fish. I’ve struggled to learn ancient Greek and Italian, but it’s really hard going. (I wish I’d learned them when I was young!)
- Is there any advice you would give to PhD students or early career researchers for finding their feet or developing their work in your field?
What field are we talking about here? I guess my general answer would be always to read texts in their original languages, if you possibly can—don’t simply take someone else’s word for it, whether that ‘someone’ is a translator, or a critic reporting or paraphrasing, or (especially) some form of AI.
Syrithe Pugh is Reader in the School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen. Her research focusses on the reception of classical literature during the Renaissance period.
Her book Euhemerism and Its Uses: The Mortal Gods was published in 2021: https://www.routledge.com/Euhemerism-and-Its-Uses-The-Mortal-Gods/Pugh/p/book/9780367557010.