Studies In Latin Literature And Its Tradition

This collection of essays was published in 1989 in celebration of C. O. Brink, formerly Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge University. Ten leading scholars of contribute papers on Latin literature, Roman history and the manuscript tradition.

A series of innovative studies in the textual and literary criticism of Latin literature and their mutually supportive relationship.

A examination of stereotypical ideas about Latin and their effect on how Latin literature is read.

This book offers an overview of the development of Latin literature from its origins in the Roman Republic to the beginning of the Middle Ages. In this book, Mackail traces the evolution of Latin literature, which was heavily influenced by Greek literature, and covers a range of genres including epic, tragedy, comedy, and lyric poetry. The book also highlights key figures of Latin literature, such as Virgil, Horace, and Cicero, and explores the social and cultural contexts that shaped their works.

This book covers a wide range of subjects from Latin literature and language to textual history and criticism. E. D. Francis gives a history of the words prae and pro, as adverb, preposition and prefix. H. D. Jocelyn surveys the distribution and differing uses of quotations from Greek poetry in Cicero's prose writings and D. F. S. Thomson takes a fresh look at the manuscript tradition of Catullus. The remaining six articles deal with later authors and are divided equally between the poets and the historians: a reading of Horace's Roman Odes and their relation to the other odes in which he addressed the Roman people; a demonstration of the internal coherence of a Tibullan elegy and two Juvenal satires; a review of disputed readings in the OCT of Livy IX; an analysis of the structure of the prologues to the Annals, Histories and Agricola to cast light on Tacitus' intentions; and a critical review of Tacitus' portrait of Germanicus, generally viewed in a sympathetic light but debated by D. O. Ross.

Latin Explorations, first published in 1963, offers a fresh approach to Roman poetry from Catullus to Ovid. Traditionally, the period is divided for specialist studies – Lyric, Epic and Elegy. In each of them, techniques of interpretation prevail, isolated from contemporary ideas about poetry and dominated by barriers between ‘textual’, ‘exegetical’ and ‘aesthetic’ criticism. Kenneth Quinn discerns in Roman poetry of this period the adolescence, maturity and decay of a single coherent tradition whose internal unity surpasses differences of form. His argument attempts to reverse the dissociation of purely academic research from appreciative criticism, whilst also incorporating the work of textual scholars. Each chapter is supported by a detailed analysis of the texts: nearly 700 lines of poetry are discussed and translated. Latin Explorations will be of significant value not only to students of the Classics, but also to the ‘Latinless’ general reader who is interested in Roman literature.

In recent decades many valuable studies have been highlighting the cultural changes that deeply affected the Roman world between the fourth and sixth centuries AD. These changes, mostly due to Christianization as well as reactions to it, occurred in literary and cultural fields. In the past they have been explained through a well-defined pattern, namely a twofold process, adapting changing contents to unchanging formal structures. However, this pattern may not be effective today, given the new framework arising from the increasing amount of data and its close examination. The papers herein collected deal with many specific texts or issues, all included in the so-called literary area of 'secularity' (according to the definition by R. A. Markus). The aim of this case-studies gallery, ranging from the fourth to seventh centuries AD, is precisely to offer a multi-layered approach to the complex, unclear-cut interweaving of continuity and discontinuity. Indeed, this is at the heart of the transformation, process of intellectual horizons in Latin Late Antiquity. This volume consists of three sections, devoted to investigating the transformation of cultural heritage in poetry and prose respectively, and the key role of school education in shaping late ancient 'secular' culture. Book jacket.

Neither older empiricist positions that genre is an abstract concept, useless for the study of individual works of literature, nor the recent (post) modern reluctance to subject literary production to any kind of classification seem to have stilled the discussion on the various aspects of genre in classical literature. Having moved from more or less essentialist and/or prescriptive positions towards a more dynamic conception of the generic model, research on genre is currently considering "pushing beyond the boundaries", "impurity", "instability", "enrichment" and "genre-bending". The aim of this volume is to raise questions of such generic mobility in Latin literature. The papers explore ways in which works assigned to a particular generic area play host to formal and substantive elements associated with different or even opposing genres; assess literary works which seem to challenge perceived generic norms; highlight, along the literary-historical, the ideological and political backgrounds to "dislocations" of the generic map.