Literature in the Roman World A New Perspective

In this volume, we are offered a new perspective on Roman literature, based on the conviction that our present appreciation for it should be informed and influenced by how it was originally perceived. From the beginning of the Roman Empire to the end of the classical era, this book focuses on the "receivers" of Roman literature-the readers, spectators, and audiences who first witnessed the works. Six contributors map out the lively and provocative surveys, covering the kinds of literature that have shaped Western culture--epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, philosophy, elegy, satire, biography, and panegyric.

'Our present appreciation of Greek and Roman literature should be informed and influenced by consideration of what it was originally appreciated for. The past, for all its alienness, affects and changes the present.' The focus of this book - its new perspective - is on the 'receivers' of literature: readers, spectators, and audiences. Six contributors, drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, explore the various and changing interactions between the makers of literature and their audiences or readers from the beginning of the Roman empire to the end of the classical era. The contributors deploy fresh insights to map out lively and provocative, yet accessible, surveys. They cover the kinds of literature which have shaped western culture - epic, lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, philosophy, rhetoric, epigram, elegy, pastoral, satire, biography, epistle, declamation, and panegyric. Who were the audiences, and why did they regard their literature as so important?

1 - Primitivism and Power: The beginnings of Latin literature
2 - Forging a national identity: Prose literature down to the time of Augustus
3 - Escapes from orthodoxy: Poetry of the late Republic
4 - Creativity out of chaos: Poetry between the death of Caesar and the death of Virgil
5 - Coming to terms with the Empire: Poetry of the later Augustan and Tiberian period
6 - The path between truculence and servility: Prose literature from Augustus to Hadrian
7 - Oblique politics: Epic of the imperial period
8 - Imperial space and time: The literature of leisure
9 - Culture wars: Latin literature from the second century to the end of the classical era

Oliver Taplin is Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at Oxford University, where he is a Tutorial Fellow at Magdalen College. He is also co-director (with Edith Hall) of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. His books include 'Homeric Soundings' (Oxford, 1992) and 'Comic Angels' (Oxford, 1993). He maintains the importance of reaching wider audiences, and has collaborated with various productions in radio, television, and the theatre.