Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic

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Cambridge University Press, 07.11.2005 - 249 Seiten
Becoming Roman Literature examines the problem of Rome's literary development by shifting attention from Rome's writers to its readers. The literature we traditionally call "early " is seen to be a product less of the mid-Republic, when poetic texts began to circulate, than of the late Republic, when they were systematically collected, canonized, and put to new social and artistic uses. Imposing on texts the name and function of literature was thus often a retrospective activity. This book explores the development of this literary sensibility from the Romans' early interest in epic and drama, through the invention of satire and the eventual enshrining of books in the public collections that became so important to Horace and Ovid.
 

Ausgewählte Seiten

Inhalt

The Muse Arrives
20
Constructing Literature
52
Comedy at Work
87
Didos Furies
115
Enter Satire
144
Roman Helicon
178
Retrospective
204
Bibliography
213
Index of Passages Discussed
241
General Index
244
Urheberrecht

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Beliebte Passagen

Seite 3 - Utinam exstarent ilia carmina, quae, multis saeculis ante suam aetatem, in epulis esse cantitata a singulis convivis de clarorum virorum laudibus, in Originibus scriptum reliquit Cato.
Seite 13 - Praeterea ex eodem libro Catonis haec etiam sparsim et intercise commeminimus: «Vestiri — inquit — in foro honeste mos erat, domi quod satis erat. Equos carius quam coquos emebant. Poeticae artis honos non erat; si quis in ea re studebat aut sese ad convivia adplicabat, crassator vocabatur»4. [6] lila quoque ex eodem libro praeclarae veritatis sententia est: «Nam vita — inquit — humana prope uti ferrum est: si exerceas, conteritur; si non exerceas, tamen robigo interficit.

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