Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome

by Michele Lowrie

Overview

In Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome Michele Lowrie examines how the Romans conceived of their poetic media. Song has links to the divine through prophecy, while writing offers a more quotisian, but also more realistic way of presenting what a poet does. In a culture of highly polished book production where recitation was the fashion, to claim to sing or to write was one means of self-definition. Lowrie assesses the stakes of poetic claims to one medium or another. Generic definition is an important factor. Epic and lyric have traditional associations with song, while the literacy epistle is obviously written. But issuess of poetic interpretability and power matter even more. The choice of medium contributes to the debate about the relative potency of rival discourses, specifically poetry, politics, and the law. Writing could offer an escape from the social and political demands of the moment by shifting the focus toward the readership of posterity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199545674
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/20/2009
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Michele Lowrie is Associate Professor of Classics at New York University.

Table of Contents

1 Arma uirumque cano 1

2 Some Background 24

Part I Writing, Performance, and Performativity

3 The Performance of Horatian Lyric: The Limits of Reference 63

4 Horatian Lyric and Metaphorical Truths 98

5 At The Limits of Performativity: The Carmen saeculare 123

6 Monument And Festival in Vergil 142

7 Elegy: Overcoming Inability 175

Part II Performance and the Augustan Literary Epistle

8 Love and Semiotics 215

9 Beyond Performance Envy: Horace, Epistles 2. 1 235

10 De- and Re-contextualization: Horace, Epistles 1. 19 251

11 Ovid's Triumphs in Exile: Representation and Power 259

Part III Writing, Performance, and Politics

12 Auctoritas and Representation: Augustus's Res gestae 279

13 Occasion and Monument: The Ara Pacis 309

Part IV Reading and the Law

14 Literature and the Law: Horace, Sermones 2. 1 327

15 Inscription and Testimony: Propertius 4. 11 349

16 The Pragmatics of Literature: Ovid 360

Abbreviations 383

References 388

Index Locorum 411

Subject Index 419