Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catallus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan. Roman Literature and Its Contexts.

Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catallus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan. Roman Literature and Its Contexts. PDF

Author: James J. O'Hara

Publisher:

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 9780511296352

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How should we react as readers and as critics when two passages in a literary work contradict one another? Classicists once assumed that all inconsistencies in ancient texts needed to be amended, explained away, or lamented. Building on recent work on both Greek and Roman authors, this book explores the possibility of interpreting inconsistencies in Roman epic. After a chapter surveying Greek background material including Homer, tragedy, Plato and the Alexandrians, five chapters argue that comparative study of the literary use of inconsistencies can shed light on major problems in Catullus' Peleus and Thetis, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Lucan's Bellum Civile. Not all inconsistencies can or should be interpreted thematically, but numerous details in these poems, and some ancient and modern theorists, suggest that we can be better readers if we consider how inconsistencies may be functioning in Greek and Roman texts.

Inconsistency in Roman Epic

Inconsistency in Roman Epic PDF

Author: James J. O'Hara

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-04-19

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 113946132X

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How should we react as readers and as critics when two passages in a literary work contradict one another? Classicists once assumed that all inconsistencies in ancient texts needed to be amended, explained away, or lamented. Building on recent work on both Greek and Roman authors, this book explores the possibility of interpreting inconsistencies in Roman epic. After a chapter surveying Greek background material including Homer, tragedy, Plato and the Alexandrians, five chapters argue that comparative study of the literary use of inconsistencies can shed light on major problems in Catullus' Peleus and Thetis, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Lucan's Bellum Civile. Not all inconsistencies can or should be interpreted thematically, but numerous details in these poems, and some ancient and modern theorists, suggest that we can be better readers if we consider how inconsistencies may be functioning in Greek and Roman texts.

Luke/Acts and the End of History

Luke/Acts and the End of History PDF

Author: Kylie Crabbe

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-11-18

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 3110615193

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Luke/Acts and the End of History investigates how understandings of history in diverse texts of the Graeco-Roman period illuminate Lukan eschatology. In addition to Luke/Acts, it considers ten comparison texts as detailed case studies throughout the monograph: Polybius's Histories, Diodorus Siculus's Library of History, Virgil's Aeneid, Valerius Maximus's Memorable Doings and Sayings, Tacitus’s Histories, 2 Maccabees, the Qumran War Scroll, Josephus's Jewish War, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch. The study makes a contribution both in its method and in the questions it asks. By placing Luke/Acts alongside a broad range of texts from Luke's wider cultural setting, it overcomes two methodological shortfalls frequently evident in recent research: limiting comparisons of key themes to texts of similar genre, and separating non-Jewish from Jewish parallels. Further, by posing fresh questions designed to reveal writers' underlying conceptions of history—such as beliefs about the shape and end of history or divine and human agency in history—this monograph challenges the enduring tendency to underestimate the centrality of eschatology for Luke's account. Influential post-war scholarship reflected powerful concerns about "salvation history" arising from its particular historical setting, and criticised Luke for focusing on history instead of eschatology due to the parousia’s delay. Though some elements of this thesis have been challenged, Luke continues to be associated with concerns about the delayed parousia, affecting contemporary interpretation. By contrast, this study suggests that viewing Luke/Acts within a broader range of texts from Luke's literary context highlights his underlying teleological conception of history. It demonstrates not only that Luke retains a sense of eschatological urgency seen in other New Testament texts, but a structuring of history more akin to the literature of late Second Temple Judaism than the non-Jewish Graeco-Roman historiographies with which Luke/Acts is more commonly compared. The results clarify not only Lukan eschatology, but related concerns or effects of his eschatology, such as Luke’s politics and approach to suffering. This monograph thereby offers an important corrective to readings of Luke/Acts based on established exegetical habits, and will help to inform interpretation for scholars and students of Luke/Acts as well as classicists and theologians interested in these key questions.

Brill's Companion to Lucan

Brill's Companion to Lucan PDF

Author: Paolo Asso

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-09-15

Total Pages: 647

ISBN-13: 9004217096

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The present collection samples the most current approaches to Lucan’s poem, its themes, its dialogue with other texts, its reception in medieval and early modern literature, and its relevance to audiences of all times.

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

Published: 2018-12-17

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 3110585847

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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.

Ronald Knox’s Lectures on Virgil’s Aeneid

Ronald Knox’s Lectures on Virgil’s Aeneid PDF

Author: Francesca Bugliani Knox

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-07-13

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1350118303

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This book makes available Ronald Knox's hitherto unpublished lectures on Virgil's Aeneid delivered at Trinity College, Oxford, as part of a lecture course on Virgil in 1912. Written with Knox's customary incisiveness and with frequent allusions to contemporary life, the lectures are devoted to the appreciation of the Aeneid and focus on what he called the 'essential and dominant characteristics' that make up its greatness. They deal with Virgil's political and religious outlook, ideas of the afterlife, sense of romance and pathos, narrative style, sources, versification and appreciation of scenery. His interpretation of the relationship between Dido and Aeneas renders redundant the question, much debated to this day, of whether Aeneas loved Dido, and also portrays Aeneas more sympathetically than is currently fashionable. The additional introductory and critical essays by the contributors place the lectures in their historical and scholarly context, bring out their enduring relevance and illustrate how Ronald Knox's distinctive approach might be still developed to advantage. As Robert Speaight noted in his presidential address to the Virgil Society in 1958, 'many of us who love our Virgil will now understand him better because Ronald Knox loved and understood him so well'.

Catullus Through his Books

Catullus Through his Books PDF

Author: John Kyrin Schafer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-03-19

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1108672663

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Modern readings of the Roman poet Catullus' work have always been constrained by doubts about the surviving text. Does the sequence of our corpus reflect the artistically coherent and meaningful arrangement of the poems? Why are the various parts of the collection so jarringly different in content and emotional tone? To what extent, if at all, can we explain these shifts by appealing to Catullus' famously vivid portrayals of his emotions and life circumstances? Catullus Through his Books argues that we possess three separate books of poems designed by the poet himself; at key moments in these books, the poems dramatise the creative activity of their own composition, embedding apparent autobiographical details and purportedly revealing the poet's intentions and goals. These dramas of composition direct us through the poems, integrating our understanding of each part and generating a holistic vision of Catullus as poet of self-destroying longing and irreparable loss.

Lustrum Band 62 – 2020

Lustrum Band 62 – 2020 PDF

Author: Marcus Deufert

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2022-05-16

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 3647352276

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Der in englischer Sprache verfasste Forschungsbericht zu Ovids Metamorphosen wurde von einem Forscher:innenteam der Universität Huelva unter Leitung von Antonio Ramírez de Verger und Luis Rivero García erstellt und arbeitet die schier unüberschaubare Literatur zu diesem gegenwärtig wohl meistgelesenen und meisterforschten Werk der römischen Dichtung kritisch auf. Im Zentrum des ersten von zwei Teilen stehen Arbeiten zur Überlieferungsgeschichte und Textkritik der Metamorphosen, außerdem Arbeiten zu solchen Aspekten des Werkes, die in den in letzten Jahrzehnten besonders intensiv erforscht wurden: u. a. Gattungsfragen, Religion, Kult und Magie, Liebe, Sexualität und Gender.

Structures of Epic Poetry

Structures of Epic Poetry PDF

Author: Christiane Reitz

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-12-16

Total Pages: 2756

ISBN-13: 3110492598

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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.