Perceptions of Horace
A Roman Poet and his Readers

This book examines the work of Horace and the ways his poetry has been read from classical antiquity to the present day.

L. B. T. Houghton (Edited by), Maria Wyke (Edited by)

9780521765084, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 December 2009

380 pages, 5 b/w illus. 1 map
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.68 kg

Throughout his work, the Roman poet Horace displays many, sometimes conflicting, faces: these include dutiful son, expert lover, gentleman farmer, man about town, outsider, poet laureate, sharp satirist and measured moraliser. This book features a wide array of essays by an international team of scholars from a number of different academic disciplines, each one shedding new light on aspects of Horace's poetry and its later reception in literature, art and scholarship from antiquity to the present day. In particular, the collection seeks to investigate the fortunes of 'Horace' both as a literary personality and as a uniquely varied textual corpus of enormous importance to western culture. The poems shape an author to suit his poetic aims; readers reshape that author to suit their own aesthetic, social and political needs. Studying these various versions of Horace and their interaction illuminates the author, his poetry and his readers.

Introduction: a Roman poet and his readers L. B. T. Houghton and Maria Wyke
1. Becoming an authority: Horace on his own reception Denis Feeney
2. The ends of the beginning: Horace, Satires 1 Emily Gowers
3. Horace's Bacchic poetics Alessandro Schiesaro
4. Horace: critics, canons and canonicity J. S. C. Eidinow
5. Laying down the law: Horace's reflection in his sententiae Martin Dinter
6. Social status and the authorial personae of Horace and Vitruvius Marden Fitzpatrick Nichols
7. Writing to the emperor: Horace's presence in Ovid's Tristia 2 Jennifer Ingleheart
8. Horace, Suetonius, and the Lives of the Greek poets Barbara Graziosi
9. Two letters to Horace: Petrarch and Andrew Lang L. B. T. Houghton
10. Horace and learned ladies Jane Stevenson
11. Vivere secundum Horatium: Otto Vaenius' Emblemata Horatiana Roland Mayer
12. The poet's voice: allusive dialogue in Ben Jonson's Horatian poetry V. A. Moul
13. Theme and variation: Horace in Pope's correspondence Niall Rudd
14. Appropriating Horace in eighteenth-century France Russell Goulbourne
15. Horace and eighteenth-century commentary Penelope Wilson
16. Horace and the Victorians Stephen Harrison
17. A late flowering of English Alcaics John Talbot.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]