Statius' Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War

Statius' Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War PDF Author: Charles McNelis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139462911
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
This study focuses on ways in which Statius' epic Thebaid, a poem about the civil war between Oedipus' sons Eteocles and Polynices, reflects the theme of internal discord in its narrative strategies. At the same time that Statius reworks the Homeric and Virgilian epic traditions, he engages with Hellenistic poetic ideals as exemplified by Callimachus and the Roman Callimachean poets, especially Ovid. The result is a tension between the impulse towards the generic expectations of warfare and the desire for delay and postponement of such conflict. Ultimately, Statius adheres to the mythic paradigm of the mutual fratricide, but he continues to employ competing strategies that call attention to the fictive nature of any project of closure and conciliation. In the process, the poem offers a new mode of epic closure that emphasises individual means of resolution.

Statius' Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War

Statius' Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War PDF Author: Charles McNelis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139462911
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study focuses on ways in which Statius' epic Thebaid, a poem about the civil war between Oedipus' sons Eteocles and Polynices, reflects the theme of internal discord in its narrative strategies. At the same time that Statius reworks the Homeric and Virgilian epic traditions, he engages with Hellenistic poetic ideals as exemplified by Callimachus and the Roman Callimachean poets, especially Ovid. The result is a tension between the impulse towards the generic expectations of warfare and the desire for delay and postponement of such conflict. Ultimately, Statius adheres to the mythic paradigm of the mutual fratricide, but he continues to employ competing strategies that call attention to the fictive nature of any project of closure and conciliation. In the process, the poem offers a new mode of epic closure that emphasises individual means of resolution.

Statius' Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War

Statius' Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War PDF Author: Charles McNelis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511270338
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Significant new reading of the epic which argues that its narrative strategies reflect the theme of internal discord.

After 69 CE - Writing Civil War in Flavian Rome

After 69 CE - Writing Civil War in Flavian Rome PDF Author: Lauren Donovan Ginsberg
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110585847
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
The fall of Nero and the civil wars of 69 CE ushered in an era scarred by the recent conflicts; Flavian literature also inherited a rich tradition of narrating nefas from its predecessors who had confronted and commemorated the traumas of Pharsalus and Actium. Despite the present surge of scholarly interest in both Flavian literary studies and Roman civil war literature, however, the Flavian contribution to Rome’s literature of bellum ciuile remains understudied. This volume shines a spotlight on these neglected voices. In the wake of 69 CE, writing civil war became an inescapable project for Flavian Rome: from Statius’s fraternas acies and Silius’s suicidal Saguntines to the internecine narratives detailed in Josephus’s Bellum Iudaicum and woven into Frontinus’s exempla, Flavian authors’ preoccupation with civil war transcends genre and subject matter. This book provides an important new chapter in the study of Roman civil war literature by investigating the multi-faceted Flavian response to this persistent and prominent theme.

Thebaid

Thebaid PDF Author: Statius
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801458080
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
The Thebaid, a Latin epic in twelve books by Statius (c. 45–96 C. E.) reexamines events following the abdication of Oedipus, focusing on the civil war between the brothers Eteocles, King of Thebes, and Polynices, who comes at the head of an army from Argos to claim his share of royal power. The poem is long—each of the twelve books comprises over eight hundred lines—and complex, and it exploits a broad range of literary works, both Greek and Latin. Severely curtailed though he was by the emperor Domitian and his Reign of Terror, Statius nevertheless created a meditation on autocratic rule that is still of political interest today. Popular in its own time and much admired in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—most notably by Dante and Chaucer—the poem fell into obscurity and has, for readers of English, been poorly served by translators. Statius composed his poem in dactylic hexameters, the supreme verse form in antiquity. In his hands, this venerable line is flexible, capable of subtle emphases and dramatic shifts in tempo; it is an expressive, responsive medium. In this new and long-awaited translation the poet Jane Wilson Joyce employs a loose, six-beat line in her English translation, which allows her to reveal something of the original rhythm and of the interplay between sentence structure and verse framework. The clarity of Joyce's translation highlights the poem's superb versification, sophisticated use of intertextuality, and bold formal experimentation and innovation. A substantial introduction and annotations make this epic accessible to students of all levels.

Statius and Virgil

Statius and Virgil PDF Author: Randall T. Ganiban
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139461796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
At the end of the Thebaid, Statius enjoins his epic 'not to compete with the divine Aeneid but rather to follow at a distance and always revere its footprints'. The nature of the Thebaid's interaction with the Aeneid is, however, a matter of debate. This 2007 book argues that the Thebaid reworks themes, scenes, and ideas from Virgil in order to show that the Aeneid's representation of monarchy is inadequate. It also demonstrates how the Thebaid's fascination with horror, spectacle, and unspeakable violence is tied to Statius' critique of the moral and political virtues at the heart of the Aeneid. Professor Ganiban offers both a way to interpret the Thebaid and a largely sequential reading of the poem.

Later Greek Epic and the Latin Literary Tradition

Later Greek Epic and the Latin Literary Tradition PDF Author: Katerina Carvounis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110791900
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The volume offers an innovative and systematic exploration of the diverse ways in which Later Greek Epic interacts with the Latin literary tradition. Taking as a starting point the premise that it is probable for the Greek epic poets of the Late Antiquity to have been familiar with leading works of Latin poetry, either in the original or in translation, the contributions in this book pursue a new form of intertextuality, in which the leading epic poets of the Imperial era (Quintus of Smyrna, Triphiodorus, Nonnus, and the author of the Orphic Argonautica) engage with a range of models in inventive, complex, and often covert ways. Instead of asking, in other words, whether Greek authors used Latin models, we ask how they engaged with them and why they opted for certain choices and not for others. Through sophisticated discussions, it becomes clear that intertexts are usually systems that combine ideology, cultural traditions, and literary aesthetics in an inextricable fashion. The book will prove that Latin literature, far from being distinct from the Greek epic tradition of the imperial era, is an essential, indeed defining, component within a common literary and ideological heritage across the Roman empire.

Intertextuality in Flavian Epic Poetry

Intertextuality in Flavian Epic Poetry PDF Author: Neil Coffee
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110602202
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
This collection of essays reaffirms the central importance of adopting an intertextual approach to the study of Flavian epic poetry and shows, despite all that has been achieved, just how much still remains to be done on the topic. Most of the contributions are written by scholars who have already made major contributions to the field, and taken together they offer a set of state of the art contributions on individual topics, a general survey of trends in recent scholarship, and a vision of at least some of the paths work is likely to follow in the years ahead. In addition, there is a particular focus on recent developments in digital search techniques and the influence they are likely to have on all future work in the study of the fundamentally intertextual nature of Latin poetry and on the writing of literary history more generally.

The Epic Gaze

The Epic Gaze PDF Author: Helen Lovatt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107016118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Re-envisions epic from Homer to Nonnus through theories of the gaze.

Civil Wars

Civil Wars PDF Author: David Armitage
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300149824
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
A highly original history, tracing civil war, the least understood and most intractable form of organized human aggression, from Ancient Rome through the centuries to present day.

Structures of Epic Poetry

Structures of Epic Poetry PDF Author: Christiane Reitz
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110492598
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 2760

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Book Description
This compendium (4 vols.) studies the continuity, flexibility, and variation of structural elements in epic narratives. It provides an overview of the structural patterns of epic poetry by means of a standardized, stringent terminology. Both diachronic developments and changes within individual epics are scrutinized in order to provide a comprehensive structural approach and a key to intra- and intertextual characteristics of ancient epic poetry.