Epic Visions
Visuality in Greek and Latin Epic and its Reception

A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary collection exploring different ways of visualising Greek and Roman epic in both ancient and modern culture.

Helen Lovatt (Edited by), Caroline Vout (Edited by)

9781107039384, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 August 2013

344 pages, 58 b/w illus.
25.3 x 17.9 x 2.2 cm, 0.86 kg

This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary collection explores different ways of visualising Greek and Roman epic from Homer to Statius, in both ancient and modern culture. The book presents new perspectives on Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Valerius Flaccus and Statius, and covers the re-working of epic matter in tragedy, opera, film, late antique speeches of praise, story-boarding, sculpture and wall-painting. The chapters use a variety of methods to address the relationship between narrative and visuality, exploring how and why epic has inspired artists, authors and directors, and offering fresh visual interpretations of epic texts. Themes and issues discussed include: intermediality, ekphrasis and panegyric, illusion and deception, imagery and deferral, alienation and involvement, the multiplicity of possible visual responses to texts, three-dimensionality, miniaturisation, epic as cultural capital, and the specificity of genres, both literary and visual.

Introduction Helen Lovatt and Caroline Vout
1. Seeing in the dark: kleos, tragedy and perception in Iliad 10 Jon Hesk
2. Operatic visions: Berlioz stages Virgil Helen Lovatt
3. Visualising Venus: epiphany and anagnorisis in Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica Emma Buckley
4. The look of the late antique emperor and the art of praise Roger Rees
5. Intermediality in Latin epic - en video quaecumque audita Martin T. Dinter
6. Viewing violence in Statius' Thebaid and the films of Quentin Tarantino Kyle Gervais
7. Storyboarding and epic Lynn S. Fotheringham and Matt Brooker
8. Epic in the round Caroline Vout
9. 'Split-screen' visions: Heracles on top of Troy in the Casa di Octavius Quartio in Pompeii Katharina Lorenz
10. Epic visions on the Tabulae Iliacae Michael Squire.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literature: history & criticism [DS]