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Considering the ubiquity of rhetorical training in antiquity, the volume starts from the premise that every first-person statement in ancient literature is in some way rhetorically modelled and aesthetically shaped. Focusing on different types of Greek and Latin literature, poetry and prose, from the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity, the contributions analyse the use and modelling of gender-specific elements in different types of first-person speech, be it that the speaker is (represented as) the author of a work, be it that they feature as characters in the work, narrating their own story or that of others. In doing so, they do not only offer new insights into the rhetorical strategies and lit...
The monograph deals with the topic of ghosts in universal literature from a polyhedral perspective, making use of different perspectives, all of which highlight the resilience of these figures from the very beginning of literature up to the present day. Therefore, the aim of this volume is to focus on how ghosts have been translated and transformed over the years within literature written in the following languages: Classical Greek and Latin, Spanish, Italian, and English.
From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender—masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). Sexing the World surveys the many ways in which grammatical gender enabled Latin speakers to organize aspects of their society into sexual categories, and how this identification of grammatical gender with biological sex affected Roman perceptions of Latin poetry, divine power, and the human hermaphrodite. Beginning with the ancient grammarians, Anthony Corbeill examines how these scholars used the gender of nouns to identify the sex of the object being signified, regardless...
Tirades against legal theatrics are nearly as old as law itself, and yet so is the age-old claim that law must not merely be done: it must be "seen to be done." Law as Performance traces the history of legal performance and spectatorship through the early modern period. Viewing law as the product not merely of edicts or doctrines but of expressive action, it investigates the performances that literally created law: in civic arenas, courtrooms, judges' chambers, marketplaces, scaffolds, and streets. It examines the legal codes, learned treatises, trial reports, lawyers' manuals, execution narratives, rhetoric books, images (and more) that confronted these performances, praising their virtues ...
The story of Maecenas and his role in the evolution and continuing legacy of ancient Roman poetry and culture An unelected statesman with exceptional powers, a patron of the arts and a luxury-loving friend of the emperor Augustus: Maecenas was one of the most prominent and distinctive personalities of ancient Rome. Yet the traces he left behind are unreliable and tantalizingly scarce. Rather than attempting a conventional biography, Emily Gowers shows in Rome’s Patron that it is possible to tell a different story, one about Maecenas’s influence, his changing identities and the many narratives attached to him across two millennia. Rome’s Patron explores Maecenas’s appearances in the c...
Provides a comprehensive critical engagement with Roman comedy and its reception presented by leading international scholars in accessible and up-to-date chapters.
Cultural memory is a framework which elucidates the relationship between the past and the present: essentially, why, how, and with what results certain pieces of information are remembered. This volume brings together distinguished classicists from a variety of sub-disciplines to explore cultural memory in the Roman Republic and the Age of Augustus. It provides an excellent and accessible starting point for readers who are new to the intersection between cultural memory theory and ancient Rome, whilst also appealing to the seasoned scholar. The chapters delve deep into memory theory, going beyond the canonical texts of Jan Assmann and Pierre Nora and pushing their terminology towards Basu's dispositifs, Roller's intersignifications, Langlands' sites of exemplarity, and Erll's horizons. This innovative framework enables a fresh analysis of both fragmentary texts and archaeological phenomena not discussed elsewhere.
Classical Rhetoric in English, 1650 - 1800 features English translations of the era’s most cherished Greek and Roman orators, rhetorical philosophers, and rhetorical critics. The publication history reveals how a distinctive British canon emerged from selected works by Plato, Isocrates, Demosthenes, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Cicero, Seneca, Quintilian, Tacitus and Longinus. Works by these ten authors, especially Cicero and Longinus, were widely disseminated, becoming key texts in the formation of British rhetorical culture. At the core of the volume, annotated selections offer the twenty-first century reader a sampling of these classical rhetorical works in translation. The glossary of rhetorical criticism elucidates the now archaic meanings of words that enabled citizens to communicate their moral and rhetorical taste.
"Beginning with Cicero and Varro and ending with Statius and Pliny the Younger, this chapter offers a chronological investigation of the ways in which real and literary gardens developed from the first century BCE to the first century CE as a means of elite masculine self-representation and the reactions of elite Roman men to the increased social and cultural power of villa and horti estates and their grounds. Gardens served as powerful symbols of wealth and as creative displays of the cultural aspirations of their owners in ways that challenged traditional definitions of gardens and of Roman manliness. Since these large-scale 'gardens' are primarily associated with leisure (otium), authors are concerned with describing and justifying their activities in these sites as befitting Roman masculine ideals. We can trace a change in attitude towards leisure and the private display of wealth, and consequently gardens, largely attributed to changes in the socio-political circumstances of the Roman elite, in the works of Statius and his contemporary Pliny the Younger, who use laudatory descriptions of extensive villas and grounds as a means of expressing social and literary power"--
This volume is the fruit of a highly productive international research gathering academic and professional (field- and museum) colleagues to discuss new results and approaches, recent finds and alternative theoretical assessments of the period of transition and transformation of classical towns in Late Antiquity. Experts from an array of modern countries attended and presented to help compare and contrast critically archaeologies of diverse regions and to debate the qualities of the archaeology and the current modes of study. While a number of papers inevitably focused on evidence available for both Spain and Portugal, we were delighted to have a spread of contributions that extended the picture to other territories in the Late Roman West and Mediterranean. The emphasis was very much on the images presented by archaeology (rescue and research works, recent and past), but textual data were also brought into play by various contributors.