Roman literary cultures : domestic politics, revolutionary poetics, civic spectacle / edited by Alison Keith and Jonathan Edmondson.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Drawing on the historicizing turn in Latin literary scholarship, Roman Literary Cultures combines new critical methods with traditional analysis across four hundred years of Latin literature.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Keith (Univ. of Toronto) and Edmondson (York Univ.) present essays in honor of Elaine Fatham on the topic of situating Roman literature in its political and social contexts. The volume serves as a sampling of the impact of Fantham's work, especially her pioneering Roman Literary Culture (2nd ed., CH, Aug'14, 51-6589). Versions of the essays included were first presented as papers at the 2010 annual meeting of the Classical Association of Canada. Topics vary considerably, ranging from republican drama to second century CE novelist Apuleius. Included among the 13 contributions are Christer Bruun's detailed reading of two brief fragments of Varro and Cedric Littlewood's examination of Lucan's use of an elegiac voice throughout the Bellum Civile. The essays are arranged in three groups: "Domestic Politics" (the social/legal status of the family); "Revolutionary Poetics" (how poets created spaces to critique the imperial system); and "Civic Spectacle" (self-presentation in the Roman world). The diverse approaches are unified by the contributors' commitment to the dialogue between literary analysis and social history. This is a volume for scholars, not an introduction or a companion representing the current state of scholarship. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Paul E. Ojennus, Whitworth University