Explorations in Latin Literature: Volume 1, Epic, Historiography, Religion

A collection of all the major papers by a leading Latinist, on key ancient genres and theoretical issues.

Denis Feeney (Author), Stephen Hinds (Introduction by)

9781108741538, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 March 2023

444 pages
22.8 x 15 x 2.4 cm, 0.65 kg

'A collection of the shorter critical writings of Denis Feeney should gladden the hearts of Latinists everywhere, who will find here an opportunity to reacquaint themselves with a four-decade-long series of influential papers that remain stimulating and are now the more so for being presented together.' Joseph D. Reed, GNOMON

Denis Feeney is one of the most distinguished scholars of Latin literature and Roman culture in the world of the last half-century. These two volumes conveniently collect and present afresh all his major papers, covering a wide range of topics and interests. Ancient epic is a major focus, followed by Latin lyric, historiography and elegy. Ancient literary criticism and the technology of the book are recurrent themes. Many papers address the problems of literary responses to religion and ritual, with an interdisciplinary methodology drawing on comparative anthropology and religion. The transition from Republic to Empire and the emergence of the Augustan principate form the background to the majority of the papers, and the question of how literary texts are to be read in historical context is addressed throughout. All quotations from ancient and modern languages have now been translated and Stephen Hinds has contributed a foreword.

Introduction
1. The taciturnity of Aeneas
2. The reconciliations of Juno
3. Epic hero and epic fable
4. Stat magni nominis umbra: Lucan on the greatness of Pompeius Magnus
5. History and revelation in Virgil's underworld
6. Following after Hercules, in Apollonius and Virgil
7. Beginning Sallust's Catiline
8. Leaving Dido: the appearance(s) of Mercury and the motivations of Aeneas
9. Epic violence, epic order: killings, catalogues, and the role of the reader in Aeneid 10
10. Mea tempora: patterning of time in Ovid's Metamorphoses
11. Interpreting sacrificial ritual in Roman poetry: disciplines and their models
12. Tenui…latens discrimine: spotting the differences in Statius' Achilleid
13. On not forgetting the 'Literatur' in 'Literatur und Religion'
14. Virgil's tale of four cities: Troy, Carthage, Alexandria and Rome
15. First similes in epic
16. Fictions of citizenship in Livy's History.

Subject Areas: Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literary theory [DSA]