ABSTRACT

This volume offers 18 new studies reflecting the latest scholarship on Latin verse, explored both in its original context and in subsequent contexts as it has been translated and re-imagined. All chapters reflect the wide research interests of Professor Susanna Braund, to whom the volume is dedicated.

Latin Poetry and Its Reception assembles a blend of senior scholars and new voices in Latin literary studies. It makes important contributions to the understanding of kingship in Hellenistic and Roman thought, with the first four chapters dedicated to exploring this theme in Republican poetry, Virgil, Seneca, and Statius. Chapters focusing on the modern reception include case studies from the 16th to the 21st century, with discussions on Gavin Douglas, Edward Gibbon, Herman Melville, Igor Stravinsky, and Elena Ferrante, among others. No comparable volume provides a similar range.

Latin Poetry and Its Reception will appeal to all scholars of Latin poetry and classical reception, from senior undergraduates to scholars in classics and other disciplines.

part 1|74 pages

Roman kingship

part 2|60 pages

Genre crossing

chapter 6|16 pages

Phaedrus in the forum

Plautus’ Pseudolus and Plato’s Phaedrus

part 3|42 pages

Imperial intertexts

chapter 11|14 pages

Keeping the faith

Allegory in late antique panegyric and hagiography

part 4|119 pages

Modern receptions

chapter 13|24 pages

After Strada

English responses to Strada’s Nightingale (Prolusiones 2.6), with texts of four previously unprinted versions

chapter 14|14 pages

Gibbon and Juvenal

chapter 15|21 pages

Into the maw

Melville and the classical tradition

chapter 16|12 pages

Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex

The libretto

chapter 17|22 pages

Muted voices

Marina Tsvetaeva’s and Anna Akhmatova’s classical heroines

chapter 18|11 pages

Translating friendship

My Brilliant Friend and the Aeneid