Unspoken Rome
Absence in Latin Literature and its Reception

Showcases innovative approaches to Latin literature, reading textual absence as a generative force for literary interpretation and reception.

Tom Geue (Edited by), Elena Giusti (Edited by)

9781108823319, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 March 2023

389 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.63 kg

Latin literature is a hotbed of holes and erasures. Its sensitivity to politics leaves it ripe for repression of all sorts of names, places and historical events, while its dense allusivity appears to hide interpretative clues in a network of texts that only the reader's consciousness can make present. This volume showcases innovative approaches to the field of Latin literature, all of which are refracted through this prism of absence, which functions as a fundamental generative force both for the hermeneutics and the ongoing literary aftermath of these texts. Reviewing and working with various influential approaches to textual absence, the contributors to Unspoken Rome treat these texts as silent types, listening out for what they do not say, and how they do not speak, whilst also tracing the ill-defined borders within which scholars and modern authors are legitimized to fill in the silences around which they are built.

Introduction Tom Geue and Elena Giusti
Part I. Absence in Text: 1. Catullus' Sapphic lacuna: A Palimpsest of Absences and Presences Ábel Tamás
2. Speaking Aposiopeseis: The (Generic) Sound of Silence in Statius' Thebaid Stefano Briguglio
3. Allegorical Absences: Virgil, Ovid, Prudentius and Claudian Philip Hardie
4. Tamen Apsentes Prosunt Pro Praesentibus: Proxied Absences and Roman Comedy Giuseppe Pezzini
5. Absence Left Wanting: The Groove in Ovid's Remedia Victoria Rimell
6. The Gaze on the Void: Hermeneutic Responses to Dido's First Appearance Viola Starnone
Part II. Absence in Context: 7. Speaking Silence in Cicero's Brutus and Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus Kathrin Winter
8. Et Sine Auctore Notissimi Uersus: Unauthored Poetry and Rome's Authoritative Turn Barbara Del Giovane
9. Looking for the Emperor in Seneca's Letters Catharine Edwards
10. Marcus Aurelius: Medi()ations not Medi(c)ations John Henderson
11. Lost in Germania: The Absence of History in Tacitus' Ethnography James Mcnamara
12. Conspicuous Absence: Tacitus' de Re Publica Ellen O'gorman
Part III. Going Beyond: 13. The Slave, Between Absence and Presence William Fitzgerald
14. In Search of the Lost City: The Enduring Absence of Pompeii Joanna Paul
15. Omnibus Umbra Locis Adero: Elena Ferrante and the Poetics of Absence Francesca Bellei
16. The Philology of Grief: Catullus 101 and Anne Carson's Nox Erik Fredericksen
17. Absence, Metaphysically Speaking: From Reception to Instauration? Duncan Kennedy
18. Afterword: Lights Out Emily Gowers.

Subject Areas: Classical Greek & Roman archaeology [HDDK], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], History [HB], Humanities [H], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literature & literary studies [D]