Author: Mairéad McAuley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199659362
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462
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Book Description
Reproducing Rome is a study of the representation of maternity in the Roman literature of the first century CE-particularly Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, and Statius-considering to what degree it reflects, constructs, or subverts Roman ideals of, and anxieties about, family and motherhood.
Author: Maciej Paprocki
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110678438
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 536
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Book Description
In 1991, Laura Slatkin published The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad, in which she argued that Homer knowingly situated the storyworld of the Iliad against the backdrop of an older world of mythos by which the events in the Iliad are explained and given traction. Slatkin’s focus was on Achilles’ mother, Thetis: an ostensibly marginal and powerless goddess, Thetis nevertheless drives the plot of the Iliad, being allusively credited with the power to uphold or challenge the rule of Zeus. Now, almost thirty years after Slatkin’s publication, this timely volume re-examines depictions and receptions of this ambiguous goddess, in works ranging from archaic Greek poetry to twenty-first century cinema. Twenty authors build upon Slatkin’s readings to explore Thetis and multiple roles she played in Western literature, art, material culture, religion, and myth. Ever the shapeshifter, Thetis has been and continues to be reconceptualised: supporter or opponent of Zeus’ regime, model bride or unwilling victim of Peleus’ rape, good mother or child-murderess, figure of comedy or monstrous witch. Hers is an enduring power of transformation, resonating within art and literature.
Author: George Alexander Gazis
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1789627354
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
The concept of the afterlife has always been prominent in both Greek literature and modern scholarship alike. The fate of man after his/her allotted time has come to an end has a central position in poetry, philosophy and religion, often leading to questions and answers as to how one can best live one’s life, and how can one deal with the burden of mortality that is inherent in every human being. The Greeks devoted a considerable amount of their literary production in an attempt to answer these questions through a variety of different media, whereas similar concerns appear to have been at the core of the ancient world in general. This volume represents the first to examine the influences, intersections, and developments of understandings of death and the afterlife between poetic, religious, and philosophical traditions in ancient Greece in one resource. Greek thinking on death and the afterlife was neither uniform, simple, nor static, and by offering an examination of these matters in a properly interdisciplinary context this collection of papers aims to demonstrate the full richness, complexity, and flexibility of these ideas in the ancient Greek world, and illuminate how freely writers from various genres drew inspiration from each other’s thinking concerning eschatological matters. Contributors: Alberto Benarbé; Rick Benitez; Nicolo Benzi; Chiara Blanco; Radcliffe Edmonds; George Alexander Gazis; Anthony Hooper; Vaios Liapis; Alex Long; Ioannis Ziogas.
Author: T. Corey Brennan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190875410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
Sabina Augusta (ca. 85-ca. 137), wife of the emperor Hadrian (reigned 117-38), accumulated more public honors in Rome and the provinces than any imperial woman had enjoyed since the first empress, Augustus' wife Livia. Indeed, Sabina is the first woman whose image features on a regular and continuous series of coins minted at Rome. She was the most travelled and visible empress to date. Hadrian also deified his wife upon her death. In synthesizing the textual and massive material evidence for the empress, T. Corey Brennan traces the development of Sabina's partnership with her husband and shows the vital importance of the empress for Hadrian's own aspirations. Furthermore, the book argues that Hadrian meant for Sabina to play a key role in promoting the public character of his rule, and details how the emperor's exaltation of his wife served to enhance his own claims to divinity. Yet the sparse literary sources on Sabina instead put the worst light on the dynamics of her marriage. Brennan fully explores the various, and overwhelmingly negative, notions this empress stirred up in historiography, from antiquity through the modern era; and against the material record proposes a new and nuanced understanding of her formal role. This biographical study sheds new light not just on its subject but also more widely on Hadrian-including the vexed question of that emperor's relationship with his apparent lover Antinoös-and indeed Rome's imperial women as a group.
Author: Alison Sharrock
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487532016
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
This book explores motherhood in Greek and Roman literature, focusing on images of mothers and their relationships with their children across a variety of genres.
Author: Emma Southon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861542312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355
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Book Description
Rome as you’ve never seen it before – brazenly unconventional, badly behaved and ever so feminine. ‘Hugely entertaining and illuminating’ —Elodie Harper, author of The Wolf Den A WATERSTONES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023 Here’s how the history of the Roman Empire usually goes… We kick off with Romulus murdering his brother, go on to Brutus overthrowing Tarquin, bounce through an appallingly tedious list of battles and generals and consuls, before emerging into the political stab-fest of the late Republic. After ‘Et tu, Brute?’, it runs through all the emperors, occasionally nodding to a wife or mother to show how bad things get when women won’t do as they’re told, until Constantine invents Christianity only for Attila the Hun to come and ruin everything. Let’s tear up this script. The history of Rome and its empire is so much more than these ‘Important Things’. In this alternative history, Emma Southon tells another story about the Romans, one that lives through Vestal Virgins and sex workers, business owners and poets, empresses and saints. Discover how entrepreneurial sex worker Hispala Faecenia uncovered a conspiracy of treason, human sacrifice and Bacchic orgies so wild they would make Donna Tartt blush, becoming one of Rome’s unlikeliest heroes. Book yourself a table the House of Julia Felix and get to know Pompeii’s savviest businesswoman and restauranteur. Indulge in an array of locally sourced delicacies as you take in the wonderful view of Mount Vesuvius… what could possibly go wrong? Join the inimitable Septimia Zenobia, who – after watching a series of incompetent, psychopathic and incompetently psychopathic emperors almost destroy the Empire – did what any of us would do. She declared herself Empress, took over half the Roman Empire and ran it herself.
Author: Farah Karim Cooper
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350027405
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
Shakespeare's and Peele's Titus Andronicus has had a theatrical and a critical revival in the last fifteen years; the critical revival was perhaps prompted by Jonathan Bate's Arden edition of the play and its revision of the traditional critical account that it is an immature work and overly sensationalistic with its emphasis on non-essential violence. Recent debates and approaches have drawn closer attention to the play's classicism; re-defined its genre (for example the revised edition of the New Dramatic Sources will re-classify the play as one of Shakespeare's Roman plays); re-considered the nature of violent spectacle, family relations and kinship, political alliance, race and miscegenation. This study will explore how the revitalized critical responses to early modern and contemporary performance histories has had a significant impact upon the wider reception of this play.
Author: Simona Martorana
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501777076
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" explores Ovid's reconceptualization of the heroines' maternal experience. Rather than aligning them with the stereotypical roles of Roman women, motherhood enables the Ovidian heroines to challenge traditional norms with irreverent perspectives on gender categories and familial relationships. To confront these perspectives and overcome the dialectic between the (male) voice of the poet and the (female) voice of the heroines, Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" argues for a form of polyphonic "cooperation" between the two voices, thus providing new angles on ironical discourse and gender fluidity within the Heroides. By reading the Heroides both through feminist theory and against Ovid's poetic production, Simona Martorana provides a novel approach to describe how motherhood enhances the heroines' agency, drawing on works of Kristeva, Irigaray, Butler, Mulvey, Cavarero, Braidotti, and Ettinger. The application of theory is flexible throughout Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" and tailored to the nuances of specific passages rather than being uniformly imposed on the ancient text. Seeking the Mothers in Ovid's "Heroides" reveals how the irony, ambiguity, and polyphony intrinsic to Ovid's poetry are amplified by the heroines' poetic voices. Martorana breaks new ground by incorporating contemporary feminist theories within the analysis of the Heroides and provides an original comprehensive analysis of motherhood that encompasses other Ovidian works, Latin poetry, and classical literature more broadly.
Author: Roy Gibson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108369189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1132
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Book Description
The Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Literature offers a critical overview of work on Latin literature. Where are we? How did we get here? Where to next? Fifteen commissioned chapters, along with an extensive introduction and Mary Beard's postscript, approach these questions from a range of angles. They aim not to codify the field, but to give snapshots of the discipline from different perspectives, and to offer provocations for future development. The Critical Guide aims to stimulate reflection on how we engage with Latin literature. Texts, tools and territories are the three areas of focus. The Guide situates the study of classical Latin literature within its global context from late antiquity to Neo-Latin, moving away from an exclusive focus on the pre-200 CE corpus. It recalibrates links with adjoining disciplines (history, philosophy, material culture, linguistics, political thought, Greek), and takes a fresh look at key tools (editing, reception, intertextuality, theory).
Author: Antonio Santosuosso
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429965656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
In the closing years of the second century B.C., the ancient world watched as the Roman armies maintained clear superiority over all they surveyed. But, social turmoil prevailed at the heart of her territories, led by an increasing number of dispossessed farmers, too little manpower for the army, and an inevitable conflict with the allies who had fought side by side with the Romans to establish Roman dominion. Storming the Heavens looks at this dramatic history from a variety of angles. What changed most radically, Santosuosso argues, was the behavior of soldiers in the Roman armies. The troops became the enemies within, their pillage and slaughter of fellow citizens indiscriminate, their loyalty not to the Republic but to their leaders, as long as they were ample providers of booty. By opening the military ranks to all, the new army abandoned its role as depository of the values of the upper classes and the propertied. Instead, it became an institution of the poor and drain on the power of the Empire. Santosuosso also investigates other topics, such as the monopoly of military power in the hands of a few, the connection between the armed forces and the cherished values of the state, the manipulation of the lower classes so that they would accept the view of life, control, and power dictated by the oligarchy, and the subjugation and dehumanization of subject peoples, whether they be Gauls, Britons, Germans, Africans, or even the Romans themselves.
