Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination

This book deals with the ways in which the Roman literary imagination explored the phenomenon of slavery.

William Fitzgerald (Author)

9780521779692, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 March 2000

142 pages
19.9 x 13 x 0.9 cm, 0.17 kg

'In short, an attractive and provocative work. In the estimate of the reviewer, it is one of the best in an outstanding series that has already established itself as an essential part of modern Latin studies.' Brent Shaw, Phoenix 55

This book explores the presence of slaves and slavery in Roman literature and asks particularly what the free imagination made of the experience of living with slaves, beings who both were and were not fellow humans. As a shadow humanity, slaves furnished the free with other selves and imaginative alibis as well as mediators between and substitutes for their peers. As presences that witnessed their owners' most unguarded moments they possessed a knowledge that was the object of both curiosity and anxiety. The book discusses not only the ideological relations of Roman literature to the institution of slavery, but also the ways in which slavery provided a metaphor for a range of other relationships and experiences, and in particular for literature itself. It is arranged thematically and covers a broad chronological and generic field.

Introduction
1. The other self: proximity and symbiosis
2. Punishment: license, (self-) control and fantasy
3. Slaves between the free
4. Slavery and the continuum of (servile) relationships
5. Enslavement and metamorphosis
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]