scholarly journals Measuring and Mapping Intergeneric Allusion in Latin Poetry using Tesserae

2017 ◽  
Vol Special Issue on... (Towards a Digital Ecosystem:...) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Burns
Keyword(s):  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Bellum Civile ◽  
Love Elegy ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Classical Poetry ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Most intertextuality in classical poetry is unmarked, that is, it lacks objective signposts to make readers aware of the presence of references to existing texts. Intergeneric relationships can pose a particular problem as scholarship has long privileged intertextual relationships between works of the same genre. This paper treats the influence of Latin love elegy on Lucan’s epic poem, Bellum Civile, by looking at two features of unmarked intertextuality: frequency and distribution. I use the Tesserae project to generate a dataset of potential intertexts between Lucan’s epic and the elegies of Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid, which are then aggregrated and mapped in Lucan’s text. This study draws two conclusions: 1. measurement of intertextual frequency shows that the elegists contribute fewer intertexts than, for example, another epic poem (Virgil’s Aeneid), though far more than the scholarly record on elegiac influence in Lucan would suggest; and 2. mapping the distribution of intertexts confirms previous scholarship on the influence of elegy on the Bellum Civile by showing concentrations of matches, for example, in Pompey and Cornelia’s meeting before Pharsalus (5.722-815) or during the affair between Caesar and Cleopatra (10.53-106). By looking at both frequency and proportion, we can demonstrate systematically the generic enrichment of Lucan’s Bellum Civile with respect to Latin love elegy.

Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novels

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Jolowicz
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Bellum Civile ◽  
Love Elegy ◽  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Daphnis And Chloe

This work establishes and explores connections between Greek imperial literature and Latin poetry. As such, it challenges conventional thinking about literary and cultural interaction of the period, which assumes that imperial Greeks are not much interested in Roman cultural products (especially literature). Instead, it argues that Latin poetry is a crucially important frame of reference for Greek imperial literature. This has significant ramifications, bearing on the question of bilingual allusion and intertextuality, as well as on that of cultural interaction during the imperial period more generally. The argument mobilizes the Greek novels—a literary form that flourished under the Roman Empire, offering narratives of love, separation, and eventual reunion in and around the Mediterranean basin—as a series of case studies. Three of these novels in particular—Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe, Achilles Tatius’ Clitophon and Leucippe, and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe—are analysed for the extent to which they allude to Latin poetry, and for the effects (literary and ideological) of such allusion. After an Introduction that establishes the cultural context and parameters of the study, each chapter pursues the strategies of an individual novelist in connection with Latin poetry: Chariton and Latin love elegy (Chapter 1); Chariton and Ovidian epistles and exilic poetry (Chapter 2); Chariton and Vergil’s Aeneid (Chapter 3); Achilles Tatius and Latin love elegy (Chapter 4); Achilles Tatius and Vergil’s Aeneid (Chapter 5); Achilles Tatius and the theme of bodily destruction in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lucan’s Bellum Civile, and Seneca’s Phaedra (Chapter 6); Longus and Vergil’s Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid (Chapter 7). The work offers the first book-length study of the role of Latin literature in Greek literary culture under the empire and thus provides fresh perspectives and new approaches to the literature and culture of this period.

scholarly journals Blood and Death of Rome in Lucan’s Bellum Civile

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Kubish
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Bellum Civile ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Natural Flow ◽  
The Future

This paper is an analysis of the symbolism of blood in Lucan’s epic poem Bellum Civile. The first part of the article discusses several examples that show Lucan’s interest in the value that blood has when it is flowing inside someone’s body, and conversely the loss of that value when the blood is shed in battle. It then reveals a parallel between the unusual descriptions of the flow of blood, and the more usual descriptions of the natural flow of water. Various examples of this parallel suggest that Lucan develops a striking image of the bloodshed of Romans becoming as normal as natural phenomena. This bloodshed thus represents the inevitable death of Rome caused by this civil war, since Lucan subtly suggests that the bloodshed and death of individual Romans only translates into the bloodshed and death of Rome itself after the main battle of this war. The theory advanced by this paper can add to the theories of some recent scholarship on this poem, which generally argues that Lucan is not so optimistic about the future of Rome as was once believed.

Latin Literature

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-106
Author(s):  
Rebecca Langlands
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Bellum Civile ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
New Generation

This time last year my review concluded with the observation that the future for the study of Latin literature is fundamentally interdisciplinary, and that we should proceed in close dialogue with social historians and art historians. In the intervening period, two books from a new generation of scholars have been published which remind us of the existence of an alternative tide that is pushing back against such culturally embedded criticism, and urging us to turn anew towards the aesthetic. The very titles of these works, with their references to ‘The Sublime’ and ‘Poetic Autonomy’ are redolent of an earlier age in their grandeur and abstraction, and in their confident trans-historicism. Both monographs, in different ways, are seeking to find a new means of grounding literary criticism in reaction to the disempowerment and relativism which is perceived to be the legacy of postmodernism. In their introductions, both bring back to centre stage theoretical controversies that were a prominent feature of scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s (their dynamics acutely observed by Don Fowler in his own Greece & Rome subject reviews of the period) but which have largely faded into the background; the new generation of Latinists tend to have absorbed insights of New Historicism and postmodernism without feeling the need either to defend their importance or to reflect upon their limitations. Henry Day, in his study of the sublime in Lucan's Bellum civile, explicitly responds to the challenges issued by Charles Martindale, who has, of course, continued (in his own words) to wage ‘war against the determination of classicists to ground their discipline in “history”’. Day answers Martindale's call for the development of some new form of aesthetic criticism, where hermeneutics and the search for meaning are replaced with (or, better, complemented by) experiential analysis; his way forward is to modify Martindale's pure aesthetics, since he expresses doubt that beauty can be wholly free of ideology, or that aesthetics can be entirely liberated from history, context, and politics. Reassuringly (for the novices among us), Day begins by admitting that the question ‘What is the sublime?’ is a ‘perplexing’ one, and he starts with the definition of it as ‘a particular kind of subjective experience…in which we encounter an object that exceeds our everyday categories of comprehension’ (30). What do they have in common, then, the versions of the sublime, ancient and modern, outlined in Chapter 1: the revelatory knowledge afforded to Lucretius through his grasp of atomism, the transcendent power of great literature for Longinus, and the powerful emotion engendered in the Romantics by the sight of impressive natural phenomena such as a mountain range or a thunderstorm? One of the key ideas to emerge from this discussion – crucial to the rest of the book – is that the sublime is fundamentally about power, and especially the transference of power from the object of contemplation to its subject. The sublime is associated with violence, trauma, and subjugation, as it rips away from us the ground on which we thought we stood; yet it does not need to be complicit with the forces of oppression but can also work for resistance and retaliation. This dynamic of competing sublimes of subjugation and liberation will then help us, throughout the following chapters, to transcend the nihilism/engagement dichotomy that has polarized scholarship on Lucan in recent decades. In turn, Lucan's deployment of the sublime uses it to collapse the opposition between liberation and oppression, and thus the Bellum civile makes its own contribution to the history of the sublime. This is an impressive monograph, much more productively engaged with the details of Lucan's poem than this summary is able to convey; it brought me to a new appreciation of the concept of the sublime, and a new sense of excitement about Lucan's epic poem and its place in the Western tradition.

COLOUR TERMS AND THE CREATION OF STATIUS’ EKPHRASTIC STYLE

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Lorenza Bennardo
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Figurative Meaning ◽  
Stylistic Feature ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Poetic Practice ◽  
Colour Terms

Abstract This paper focusses on colour terminology as a tool for achieving ἐνάργεια (pictorial vividness) in the Latin poetry of the first century c.e. After briefly outlining the developments in the concept of ἐνάργεια from Aristotle to Quintilian, the paper considers the use of Latin terms for black in three descriptive passages from Statius’ epic poem, the Thebaid. It is observed that the poet privileges the juxtaposition of the two adjectives ater and niger in a pattern of uariatio, where ater often carries a figurative meaning and repeats established poetic clichés, while niger is part of unparalleled collocations that evoke a material notion of blackness. Further analysis of the uariatio in the context of each passage reveals that the juxtaposition of the two-colour terms enhances the vividness of the objects described not only by increasing their chromatic impact but also by establishing connections with other parts of the poem, and by inviting a reflection on the competing practices of imitation and transgression of poetic models. The analysis of one stylistic feature (the use of colour terms in uariatio) shows that this stylistic feature is used by Statius for achieving ἐνάργεια as an artistic effect, for reflecting on ἐνάργεια as an instrument through which poetic models are challenged, and for tying his own poetic practice to contemporary rhetorical discussions.

Tombs of the Ancient Poets

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
The Body ◽  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Classical Poetry ◽  
Hellenistic Poetry ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Votive Offerings ◽  
Literary Reception

This book explores the ways in which the tombs of the ancient poets—real and imagined—are crucial sites for the reception of Greek and Latin poetry. The volume makes a distinctive contribution to the study of literary reception by focusing on the materiality of the body and the tomb, and the ways in which they mediate the relationship between classical poetry and its readers. From the tomb of the boy poet Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, which preserves his prize-winning poetry carved on the tombstone itself, to the modern votive offerings left at the so-called ‘Tomb of Virgil’, from the doomed tomb-hunting of long-lost poets’ graves to the ‘graveyard of the imagination’ constructed in Hellenistic poetry collections, the essays in this volume demonstrate how the tombs of the ancient poets shape and in turn are shaped by literary history.

Victorious Virgin: Early Modern Mary Epics between Theological-Didactical and Epic Poetry (Virgo Victrix: Frühneuzeitliche Marienepik zwischen theologischem Lehrgedicht und Epos)

Daphnis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 30-64
Author(s):  
Bernd Roling
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Biblical Poetry ◽  
German Scholar ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Intellectual Skills ◽  
Epic Poems

This paper deals with a neglected subgenre of biblical poetry, namely with epic poems on the life of the Blessed Virgin. After an introduction into the poetic treatment of Mary in early modern latin poetry in general, one single epic poem is discussed in detail, the Mariados libri tres of the Italian-German scholar Giulio Cesare Delfini. As it will be demonstrated, Delfini’s poem included long explanations of medico-theological problems, like the digestion of the Divine Virgin or her intellectual skills, which the poet treated in addition in separate glosses. As result the poem presents itself as hybrid between didactic and epic poetry. In addition the study contains as an Appendix a list of (approximately) all accessible Latin poems, written between 1550 and 1650, on the incarnation and birth of Christ.

Epigrams and Satire in Latin Poetry

Classics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Love Elegy ◽  
Petronius Arbiter ◽  
Funerary Inscriptions ◽  
Verse Forms ◽  
Occasional Verse ◽  
The Erotic

“Epigram” is from a Greek word that means “inscription.” Greek epigrams originally were inscriptions on objects or monuments (often tombs), intended to identify their owner or maker, and are usually defined as pointed and witty maxims or adages. Latin epigrams, too, can be identified as early funerary inscriptions, but they also comprise the erotic and occasional verse of the sort that Catullus wrote and the extant Priapea, a collection of poems about the phallic god Priapus and attributed to an unnamed group of poets who met at the house of Maecenas (the patron of Vergil, Horace, and Propertius, among others). Similar poems, largely lost, were attributed to such authors as Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Ovid, Seneca, Pliny, and Petronius. From a later period there are epigrams by Claudian, Ausonius, Paulinus of Nola, Pope Damasus I, and those authors represented by the Anthologia Latina. By far the greatest body of extant Latin epigram, however, is the collected poetry of Martial, who, in his 1,561 poems, changed the epigram into something almost uniquely his own. Martial will therefore be the focus of this portion of this article. Epigrams fall into four categories: (1) inscriptions, (2) short erotic poems, (3) special verses for social occasions, and (4) the short satirical poem having a “point.” This fourth category causes epigram to be most closely allied to satire. Roman satire, like Latin love elegy (“elegiac poetry”), is considered to be a uniquely Roman poetic form. Originally a mix of verse forms, or of both prose and verse forms, it soon acquired its own character as an ironic or humorous treatment of human faults and foibles. Menippean satires, named after the 3rd-century bce Cynic philosopher Menippus of Gadara (in Palestine), were a mixture of prose and verse. They were imitated by Varro, L. Annaeus Seneca, Petronius Arbiter, and the emperor Julian. “Roman satire,” however, most often refers to the dactylic hexameter satirical poetry (“Roman verse satire”) of Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal.

scholarly journals Polska epika bohaterska przed i po „Gofredzie”

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 97-122
Author(s):  
Roman Krzywy
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Bellum Civile ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Primary Model ◽  
Latin Epic ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Epic Poems ◽  
Heroic Poem

The article is a review of the most important trends in the development of the Polish epic in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the absence of significant traditions of knightly works, the creation of Polish heroic poetry should be associated primarily with the humanistic movement, whose representatives set a heroic epic at the top of the hierarchy of genres and recognized 'Eneid' as its primary model. The postulate proposed first by the Renaissance and later by the Baroque authors did not lead to the creation of a ‘real’ epic in Poland. The translations of: the Virgil’s epic poem (1590) by Andrzej Kochanowski and Book 3 of 'The Iliad' by Jan Kochanowski can be regarded as the genre substitutes. These translations seem to test whether the young Polish poetic language is able to bear the burden of an epic matter. Then again, the works of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski on the Latin 'Lechias' (the 1st half of the 17th century), which was to present the beginnings of the Polish state, were not completed. Polish Renaissance authors preferred themes from modern or even recent history, choosing 'Bellum civile' by Lucan as their general model but they did not refrain from typically heroic means in the presentation of the subject. This is evidenced by such poems as 'The Prussian War' (1516) by Joannis Vislicensis or 'Radivilias' (1592) by Jan Radwan. The Latin epic works were followed by the vernacular epic in the 17th century, when the historical epic poems by Samuel Twardowski and Wacław Potocki were created, as well as in the 18th century (the example of 'The Khotyn War' by Ignacy Krasicki). The publication of Torquato Tasso’s 'Jerusalem delivered' translation by Piotr Kochanowski in 1618 introduced to the Polish literature a third variant of an epic poem, which is a combination of a heroic poem and romance motives. The translation gained enormous recognition among literary audiences and was quickly included in the canon of imitated works, but not as a model of an epic, but mainly as a source of ideas and poetic phrases (it was used not only by epic poets). The exception here is the anonymous epos entitled 'The siege of Jasna Góra of Częstochowa', whose author spiced the historical action of the recent event with romance themes, an evident reference to the Tasso’s poem. The Polish translation of Tasso’s masterpiece also contributed to the popularity of the ottava rima, as an epic verse from the second half of the 17th century (previously the Polish alexandrine dominated as the equivalent of the ancient hexameter). This verse was used both in the historical and biblical epic poems, striving to face the rhythmic challenge.

Notes on Johnson's Latin Poetry

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-223
Author(s):  
Niall Rudd
Keyword(s):  
Latin Poetry
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