Download or read book The Art of Complicity in Martial and Statius written by Erik Gunderson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art of Complicity in Martial and Statius examines the relationship between politics and aesthetics in two poets from the reign of Domitian. Gunderson offers a comprehensive overview of the Epigrams of Martial and the Siluae of Statius. The praise of power found in these texts is not something forced upon these poems, nor is it a mere appendage to these works. Instead, power and poetry as a pair are a fundamental dyad that can and should be traced throughout the two collections. It is present even when the emperor himself is not the topic of discussion. In Martial the portrait of power is constantly shifting. Poetic play takes up the topic of political power and 'plays around with it'. The initial relatively sportive attitude darkens over time. Late in the game we have ecstasies of humiliation. After Domitian dies the project tries to get back to the old games, but it cannot. Statius' Siluae merge the lies one tells to power with the lies of poetry more generally. Poetic mastery and political mastery cannot be dissociated. The glib, glitzy poetry of contemporary life articulates a radical modernism that is self-authorizing, and so complicit with a power whose structure it mirrors. What does it mean to praise praise poetry? To celebrate celebrations? Gunderson's discussion opens and closes with a meditation upon the dangers of complicit criticism and the seductions of a discourse of pure art in a world where the art is anything but pure.
Download or read book The Poetic World of Statius Silvae written by Michael Putnam and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-03 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the essays of this volume, Michael Putnam shows how seriously Statius pays homage to his canonical predecessor, Virgil, how thoroughly he interprets the complexities of Virgilian poetry, and how he often, by placing a Virgilian reference in a different social and cultural context, boldly turns Virgil to new and more positive purposes. He focuses particularly, though not exclusively, on those Silvae which deal with the architectural world of Statius' society, the private villas, the gardens, and the imperial palace. He also writes of the Roman equivalent of the 'Grand Tour,' a young man's educational journey through the monuments of Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor. The essays offer valuable insight into the cultural and social identity of late first-century imperial Rome. Statius' reverential but also heuristic engagement with Virgil emerges more distinctly across the interrelated essays. Putnam's collected essays display the pioneering nature of Statius' Silvae in the development of ecphrasis as an important social and literary mode in Roman poetry.
Download or read book Ritual and the Poetics of Closure in Flavian Literature written by Angeliki-Nektaria Roumpou and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-08-07 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of papers responds to the question of whether a ritual at the end of a text can offer resolution and order or rather a complicated kind of closure. It reveals that ritual can bring but also can thwart closure by alluding to new beginnings. A ritual could be a perfect kind of ending but it hardly ever seems to be. In Flavian literature this is even more apparent because of the complicated political background under which these texts were produced. Ancient religious practices in the closing sections of Flavian texts help us create connections between endings and (new) beginnings, order and disorder, binding and loosening, structure and dissolution which reflects the structure of the Empire in Flavian Rome. Overall, this volume offers a new tool for studying literary endings through ritual, which promotes our understanding of Flavian culture and politics as well as creating a new perception of the use of religion and ritual in Flavian literature: instead of giving a sense of closure, this volume argues that ritual is a medium to increase complexity, to expose ritual actors and to project a generic riskiness of ritual actors also onto the epic actors who are acting before and mostly after a ritual scene.
Download or read book Women in Martial written by Ilaria Marchesi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women in Martial is the first monograph to treat the portrayals of women in Martial's Epigrams in a systematic way. In this volume, Marchesi proposes a new method of exploring the cultural construction of femininity in the Flavian age, presenting an interplay between close readings of Martial's poems and their contextualization through legal, historiographic, rhetorical, and grammatical discussions. This book discusses the social roles assigned to women in Roman society, where they were at once called to represent their fathers and reproduce their husbands, together with the question of to what extent they are depicted as semiotic signifiers in Martial's corpus. Noting socially aberrant behavior by pointedly using the discourse of grammar and its categories to detect and address the social issues of his time, Martial—a poet who distinctively adopts the role of a surrogate censor for Domitian—constructs the women he depicts in both negative and positive ways as signs of their time. Using a wide range of examples from ancient Roman literary culture, Women in Martial models a way of using both historical and literary sources to address the intersection of social and cultural issues in the study of women in the ancient world, ultimately demonstrating the extent to which the social roles and identities of women were constructed and policed through semiotic categories.
Download or read book Ancient Roman Literary Gardens written by K. Sara Myers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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"--
Download or read book Flattery in Seneca the Younger written by Martina Russo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-22 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flattery in Seneca the Younger explores the discourse of flattery in Seneca's philosophical texts, and analyses the extent to which Seneca developed a theory of adulation. Martina Russo maps a phenomenology of flattery, tracing its external manifestations in Senecan philosophy. The personal practice of flattery displayed in the Ad Polybium and in De clementia along with the 'distant' exempla of flattery represented by Seneca, and with the theorization of adulation, indicates the range and the complexity of strategic flattery during the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Furthermore, it is argued that Seneca emerges not only as a practitioner of flattery but also as a theorist of it. While many writers tarnished their reputation by giving in to flattery, Seneca was among the few who not only accepted flattery but also advocated it as an essential tool in his own times. Nevertheless, in Seneca's philosophical prose, a constant tension emerges: whereas flattery is 'politically' acceptable as an instrument to cope with the absolute power embraced by the princeps, the sapiens (wise) and the proficiens (would-be wise) should be careful because flattery can seriously compromise their path to wisdom. By analysing the theory and practice of flattery, Russo discusses how passages permeated with the most blatant flattery can be read on a new level, by viewing Seneca's philosophical prose as an extended exercise in symbolic projection and figured speech. It becomes possible to disclose traces of political criticism behind the fa?ade of the most flagrant flattery.
Download or read book Comparing Roman Hellenisms in Italy written by Basil Dufallo and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2023-04-17 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Roman Hellenism—defined as the imitation or adoption of something Greek by those subject to or operating under Roman power—begins not with Roman incursions into the Greek mainland, but in Italy, where our most plentiful and spectacular surviving evidence is concentrated. Think of the architecture of the Roman capital, the Campanian towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum buried by Vesuvius, and the Hellenic culture of the Etruscans. Perhaps “everybody knows” that Rome adapted Greek culture in a steadily more “sophisticated” way as its prosperity and might increased. This volume, however, argues that the assumption of smooth continuity, let alone steady “improvement,” in any aspect of Roman Hellenism can blind us to important aspects of what Roman Hellenism really is and how it functions in a given context. As the first book to focus on the comparison of Roman Hellenisms per se, Comparing Roman Hellenisms in Italy shows that such comparison is especially valuable in revealing how any singular instance of the phenomenon is situated and specific, and has its own life, trajectory, circumstances, and afterlife. Roman Hellenism is always a work in progress, is often strategic, often falls prey to being forgotten, decontextualized, or reread in later periods, and thus is in important senses contingent. Further, what we may broadly identify as a Roman Hellenism need not imply Rome as the only center of influence. Roman Hellenism is often decentralized, and depends strongly on local agents, aesthetics, and materials. With this in mind, the essays concentrate geographically on Italy to lend both focus and breadth to our topic, as well as to emphasize the complex interrelation of Hellenism at Rome with Rome’s surroundings. Because Hellenism, whether as practiced by Romans or Rome’s subjects, is in fact widely diffused across far-flung geographical regions, the final part of the collection gestures to this broader context.
Download or read book Roman Law and Latin Literature written by and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-04-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a long overdue appraisal of the dynamic interactions between Roman law and Latin literature. Despite there being periods of massive tectonic shifts in the legal and literary landscapes, the Republic and Empire of Rome have not until now been the focus of interdisciplinary study in this field. This volume brings vital new material to the attention of the law and literature movement. An interdisciplinary approach is at the heart of this volume: specialists in Roman law rarely engage in constructive dialogue with specialists in Latin literature and vice versa but this volume bridges that divide. It shows how literary scholars are eager to examine the importance of law in literature or the juridical nature of Latin literature, while Romanists are ready to embrace the interactions between literary and legal discourse. This collection capitalizes on the opportunity to open a fruitful dialogue between scholars of Latin literature and Roman law and thus makes a major, much-needed contribution to the growing field of law and literature.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy written by Myrto Garani and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-24 with total page 649 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Several decades of scholarship by now have demonstrated that Roman thinkers have developed in new and stimulating directions the systems of thought they inherited from the Greeks, and that, taken together, they offer a range of perspectives that are of philosophical interest in their own right. This collection of essays pursues a maximally inclusive approach, covering not only authors such as Augustine, but also poets or historians. It pays attention to the mode in which these works were written (giving rhetoric too its due) and their often conscious reflections on the process of translating, or transferring Greek ideas to Roman contexts"--
Download or read book The Art of Holding written by Marc Tedeschi and published by Weatherhill, Incorporated. This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illuminating work outlines the essential principles and techniques that define the art of holding in most martial arts. More than 1,300 outstanding photographs introduce over 155 practical techniques encompassing all types of holds: joint-lock holds, chokes, head locks, nerve holds, pressure point attacks, takedowns, ground pins, advanced combination holds and transitions, and defenses against chokes and joint-lock holds. Comprehensive introductory chapters provide an authoritative overview of important technical principles, East Asian energetic concepts, and 69 fundamental skills encompassing stances, footwork, grips, and methods of tumbling and falling. Precise anatomical illustrations and descriptions of 106 common Oriental pressure points, and a visual comparison of different martial arts, make this an invaluable resource for all martial styles. Expertly written and designed by the author of the 1,136-page Hapkido--widely acclaimed as the most comprehensive book ever written on a single martial art--this exceptional work is designed to stand alone, or function as a companion text with the author's other works on martial techniques and anatomy. Regardless of the style you practice, these books will enrich your training, improve your technique, and deepen your understanding of the unique qualities embodied in your own martial art.
Download or read book Latin Panegyric written by Roger Rees and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin Panegyric represents modern readings on the collection of classical Latin oratory addressed to Roman emperors. With a full introduction, and with four essays translated into English for the first time, the volume plots the narratives of Roman praise and gives students of classical literature and rhetoric direct access to key scholarship.
Download or read book Reference Guide to World Literature written by Lesley Henderson and published by Saint James Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overviews of writers and works from the ancient Greeks through the 20th century, written by subject experts. Each author entry provides a detailed overview of the writer's life and works. Work entries cover a particular piece of world literature in detail.
Download or read book Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus written by Christopher Athanasious Faraone and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus, Christopher Faraone discusses a number of short hexametrical genres such as oracles, incantations and laments that do not easily fit the generic models provided by the extant poetry of Hesiod and Homer. In the process, he gives us new insight into their ritual performance, their early history, and how poets from Homer to Theocritus embedded or imitated these genres to enrich their own hexametrical poems--by playing with and sometimes overturning the generic expectations of their audiences or readers. Christopher Faraone combines literary and ritual studies to produce a rich and detailed picture of hexametrical genres performed publicly for gods, such as hymns or laments for Adonis, or other that were performed more privately, such as epithalamia, oracles, or incantations. This volume deals primarily with the recovery of lost or under-appreciated hexametrical genres, which are often left out of modern taxonomies of archaic hexametrical poetry, either because they survive only in fragments or because the earliest evidence for them dates to the classical period.
Download or read book Metalepsis written by Sebastian Matzner and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Metalepsis' is a term from classical rhetoric, but in the twentieth century, it was re-framed more broadly as a crossing of the boundaries that separate distinct narrative worlds. This modern notion of metalepsis, introduced by G�rard Genette, has so far largely been theorized on the basis of examples from post-modern novels and films. Yet metalepsis has a much greater potential to address all sorts of transgressions between 'worlds' or 'levels', not only in post-modern but also pre-modern literature. This volume explores metalepsis in classical antiquity, considering questions such as: if metalepsis consists fundamentally in the breaking down of barriers, what sort of barriers and what sort of transgressions can the concept be fruitfully applied to? Can it be used within approaches other than narratology? Does metalepsis require recognisable levels of reality and fictionality, and if so, what role might be played by other planes, such as the past, the mythical or the divine? What form does metalepsis take in less obviously 'narrative' genres, such as lyric poetry? And how should it be understood in visual media? Reflecting on these questions sheds new light on important dynamics in ancient texts, and advances literary theory by probing how explorations of ancient metalepsis might change, refine, or extend our understanding of the concept itself.
Download or read book Homer and the Poetics of Hades written by George Alexander Gazis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique approach to the Iliad and the Odyssey explores the role and function of Hades as a poetic environment in which traditional exposition of heroic values may be subverted in favour of a more personally inflected approach to the epic past, giving rise to a different kind of poetics: the 'poetics of Hades'.
Download or read book Otherworlds written by Aisling Nora Byrne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new perspective on the "otherworlds" of medieval literature. These fantastical realms are among the most memorable places in medieval writing, by turns beautiful and monstrous, alluring and terrifying. Passing over a river or sea, or entering into a hollow hill, heroes come upon strange and magical realms. These places are often very beautiful, filled with sweet music, and adorned with precious stones and rich materials. There is often no darkness, time may pass at a different pace, and the people who dwell there are usually supernatural. Sometimes such a place is exactly what it appears to be--the land of heart's desire--but, the otherworld can also have a sinister side, trapping humans and keeping them there against their will. Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature takes a fresh look at how medieval writers understood these places and why they found them so compelling. It focuses on texts from England, but places this material in the broader context of literary production in medieval Britain and Ireland. The narratives examined in this book tell a rather surprising story about medieval notions of these fantastical places. Otherworlds are actually a lot less "other" than they might initially seem. Authors often use the idea of the otherworld to comment on very serious topics. It is not unusual for otherworld depictions to address political issues in the historical world. Most intriguing of all are those texts where locations in the real world are re-imagined as otherworlds. The regions on which this book focuses, Britain, Ireland, and the surrounding islands, prove particularly susceptible to this characterization.
Download or read book Adverse Genres in Fernando Pessoa written by K. David Jackson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-25 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poet, short-story writer, feverish inventor--Fernando Pessoa was one of the most innovative figures shaping European modernism. Known for a repertoire of works penned by multiple invented authors--which he termed heteronyms--the Portuguese writer gleefully subverted the notion of what it means to be an author. Adverse Genres in Fernando Pessoa offers an introduction to the fiction and the "profusion of selves" that populates the enigmatic author's uniquely imagined oeuvre. To guide readers through the eclectic work fashioned by Pessoa's heteronyms, K. David Jackson advances the idea of "adverse genres" revealing genre clashes to be fundamental to the author's paradoxical and contradictory corpus. Through the invented "coterie of authors," Pessoa inverted the usual relationships between form and content, authorship and text. In an inspired, paradoxical, and at times absurd mixing of cultural referents, Pessoa selected genres from the European tradition (Ricardo Reis's Horatian odes, Álvaro de Campos's worship of Walt Whitman, Alberto Caeiro's pastoral and metaphysical verse, and Bernardo Soares's philosophical diary), into which he inserted incongruent contemporary ideas. By creating multiple layers of authorial anomaly Pessoa breathes the vitality of modernism into traditional historical genres, extending their expressive range. Through examinations of "A Very Original Dinner," the "Cancioneiro," love letters to Ophelia Queirós, "The Adventure of the Anarchist Banker," Pessoa's collection of quatrains derived from Portuguese popular verse, the Book of Disquietude, and the major poetic heteronyms, Jackson enters the orbit of the artist who exchanged a normal life for a world of the imagination.
