Marginality Canonicity Passion

In recent years, the discipline of Classics has been experiencing a profound transformation affecting not only its methodologies and hermeneutic practices - how classicists read and interpret ancient literature - but also, and more importantly, the objects of classical study themselves. One of the most important factors has been the establishment of reception studies, examining the ways in which classical literature and culture have been appropriated or responded to in later ages and/or non-western cultures. This temporal and cultural expansion beyond the 'traditional' remit of the field has had many salutary effects, but reception studies are not without limitations: of particular consequence is a tendency to focus almost exclusively on the most canonical Greek and Latin texts which is partly due to the sheer scale on which they have been received, adapted, discussed, and alluded to since antiquity. By definition, reception studies are uninterested in texts which have had no 'success', but the result of an implicit adoption of canonicity as an unspoken criterion is the marginalization of other texts which, despite their inherent value, have not experienced so significant a Nachleben. This volume seeks to move beyond the questions of what is central, what is marginal, and why, to explore instead the range and significance of the classical canon and the processes by which it is shaped and changed by its reception in different academic and cultural environments. By examining the academic study of Classics from the interrelated titular perspectives of marginality, canonicity, and passion, it aims to unveil their many subtle implications and reopen a discussion not only about what makes the discipline unique, but also about what direction it might take in the future.

In recent years, the discipline of Classics has been experiencing a profound transformation affecting not only its methodologies and hermeneutic practices - how classicists read and interpret ancient literature - but also, and more importantly, the objects of classical study themselves. One of the most important factors has been the establishment of reception studies, examining the ways in which classical literature and culture have been appropriated or responded to in later ages and/or non-western cultures. This temporal and cultural expansion beyond the 'traditional' remit of the field has had many salutary effects, but reception studies are not without limitations: of particular consequence is a tendency to focus almost exclusively on the most canonical Greek and Latin texts which is partly due to the sheer scale on which they have been received, adapted, discussed, and alluded to since antiquity. By definition, reception studies are uninterested in texts which have had no 'success', but the result of an implicit adoption of canonicity as an unspoken criterion is the marginalization of other texts which, despite their inherent value, have not experienced so significant a Nachleben. This volume seeks to move beyond the questions of what is central, what is marginal, and why, to explore instead the range and significance of the classical canon and the processes by which it is shaped and changed by its reception in different academic and cultural environments. By examining the academic study of Classics from the interrelated titular perspectives of marginality, canonicity, and passion, it aims to unveil their many subtle implications and reopen a discussion not only about what makes the discipline unique, but also about what direction it might take in the future.

This volume explores the theme of marginality in the literature and history of the Neronian and Flavian periods. As a concept of modern criticism, the term marginality has been applied to the connection between the uprooted experience of immigrant communities and the subsequent diasporas these groups formed in their new homes. The concept also covers individuals or groups who were barred from access to resources and equal opportunities based on their deviation from a "normal" or dominant culture or ideology. From a literary vantage point, we are interested in the voices of "marginal," or underappreciated authors and critical voices. The distinction between marginalia and "the" text is often nebulous, with marginal comments making their way into the paradosis and being regarded, in modern criticism, as important sources of information in their own right. The analysis of relevant passages from various authors including Lucan, Petronius, Persius, Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, Silius Italicus, and Statius, as well as the Moretum of the Appendix Vergiliana is vital for our understanding of the treatment of marginalized people in various literary genres in relation to each one’s different purposes.

In The History of the Destruction of Troy, Dares the Phrygian boldly claimed himself as eyewitness to the Trojan War, challenging the accounts of two of the ancient world's most canonical poets, Homer and Virgil. For over a milennium, Dares' work was circulated as the first pagan history. It promised facts and only facts about what really happened at Troy--precise casualty figures, no mentions of mythical phenomena, and a claim that Troy fell when Aeneas and other Trojans betrayed their city and opened gates to the Greeks. But for all its intrigue, the work was as sensational as it was fake. From the late antique encyclopedist Isidore of Seville to Thomas Jefferson, The First Pagan Historian offers the first comprehensive account of Dares' rise and fall. Along the way, it reconstructs Dares' central place in longstanding debates over the nature of history, fiction, criticism, philology, and myth, from ancient Rome to the Enlightenment.

Canonisation is fundamental to the sustainability of cultures. This volume is meant as a (theoretical) exploration of the process, taking Eurasian societies from roughly the first millennium BCE (Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish and Roman) as case studies. It focuses on canonisation as a form of cultural formation, asking why and how canonisation works in this particular way and explaining the importance of the first millennium BCE for these question and vice versa. As a result of this focus, notions like anchoring, cultural memory, embedding and innovation play an important role throughout the book.

The Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Literature offers a critical overview of work on Latin literature. Where are we? How did we get here? Where to next? Fifteen commissioned chapters, along with an extensive introduction and Mary Beard's postscript, approach these questions from a range of angles. They aim not to codify the field, but to give snapshots of the discipline from different perspectives, and to offer provocations for future development. The Critical Guide aims to stimulate reflection on how we engage with Latin literature. Texts, tools and territories are the three areas of focus. The Guide situates the study of classical Latin literature within its global context from late antiquity to Neo-Latin, moving away from an exclusive focus on the pre-200 CE corpus. It recalibrates links with adjoining disciplines (history, philosophy, material culture, linguistics, political thought, Greek), and takes a fresh look at key tools (editing, reception, intertextuality, theory).

This volume makes a powerful argument for epitome (combining textual dismemberment and re-composition) as a broad hermeneutic field encompassing multifarious historical, conceptual and aesthetical concerns. The contributors gather from across the globe to present case studies of the 'summing up' of cultural artefacts, literary and artistic, in epitomic writing, and as a collective they demonstrate the importance of this genre that has been largely overlooked by scholars. The volume is divided into five sections: the first showcases the broad range of fields from which epitomic analysis can be made, from classics to postmodernism to cultural memory studies; the second focuses in on epitome as dismemberment in writing from late antiquity to the modern day; the third considers a 'productive negativity' of epitomic writings and how they are useful tools for investigating the very borders and paradoxes of language; the fourth brings this to bear on materiality; the fifth considers re-composition as a counterpart to dismemberment and problematises it. Across the volume, examples are taken from important late antique writers such as Ausonius, Clement of Alexandria, Macrobius, Nepos, Nonius Marcellus and Symphosius, and from modern authors such as Antonin Artaud, Barthes, Nabokov and Pascal Quignard. Epitomic writings about art from decorated tabulae to sarcophagi are also included, as are epitomic images themselves in the form of manuscript illustrations that sum up their text.

By examining some early poetic understandings of what it might have meant to be Vergil, Ovid, and Tibullus, this volume explores what those authors meant to near-contemporaries, and what the construction of authorship they were a part of meant to the later western tradition.