Jerome’s familiarity with, and use of, the comedies of Terence and Plautus are well documented. As a source of archaising language, Roman comedy was highly prized during the second sophistic period: the use of comic language may be traced through Cicero and the Rhetorica ad Herennium into Fronto and Apuleius. Regine May (2006) has demonstrated how Apuleius goes beyond mere antiquarianism in appropriating comic content along with comic language in his comic novel, the Metamorphoses. A related argument can be made concerning Jerome’s shortest and most novelistic saint’s life, the Vita Malchi. The language of this work echoes all sorts of genres, including epic, history, scholastic oratory, and comedy. I shall attempt to relate the comic linguistic elements to the interpretation of the actions depicted and demonstrate that humour, or comedy, is a valid key (although by no means the only one) for interpreting this edifying tale. As in other narrative prose genres, comic stock characters and plot elements are exploited to create expectations. Examples are the dour and inflexible versus the loving idealised father figure; the impetuous youth; the unscrupulous adulteress; and the officious, self-important fellow slave. These familiar stereotypes provide a measure of orientation in a new and as yet experimental fusion of genres; but, like Lucius in Apuleius, Malchus as the narrating character can also be read as undermining himself to some extent. The comic intertext therefore cautions the reader against taking Malchus’ pious protestations at face value: his pompousness and his moral fallibility require emotional distancing just as his vicissitudes call for empathy. This combined mechanism ultimately deepens the impact of the moral message of the Vita.
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