Creative Destruction: Metaliterary Tree Violation in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae

This article examines tree violation in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae as a metaliterary comment on the reception of the Latin epic tradition and poetic secondariness. After connecting the trees to numerous literary traditions (e.g., pastoral, Gigantomachic epic, metamorphic epic), the narrator details their violation by Ceres, who fashions the timber into torches. The allusions and generic associations within this scene demonstrate the metaliterary potential of Claudian’s grove and reveal its decrepit trees as analogues for earlier poetry, fit to be harvested and used by the secondary poet. Comparisons to seafaring, found within the grove scene and elsewhere in the poem, are crucial for this interpretation.