The Production of Space in Latin Literature

William Fitzgerald, Efrossini Spentzou

Oxford University Press, Mar 9, 2018 - Literary Collections - 304 pages

Recent decades have seen a marked shift in approaches to cultural analysis, with the critical role of location and spatial experience in the formation of the human subject gaining increasing prominence. This volume applies the insights and concerns of the 'spatial turn' to this specifically Roman engagement with space, and explores its representation and manipulation in Latin literature. The terrain covered by the contributions is broad, both temporally (from Catullus to St Augustine) and in terms of genre, with lyric, epic, elegy, satire, epistolography, and historiography all finding their place in discussions that focus mainly on movement and the mobile subject in the experience and making of space. Offering a detailed exploration of Roman engagement with space, the ideological stakes of this engagement, and its intersections with empire, urbanism, identity, ethics, exile, and history, the volume contains a wealth of insights for readers across and beyond the discipline of classical studies: those looking equally for new approaches to ancient texts and authors or to explore the relationship between the materiality of antiquity and its literary aspects will find these discussions illuminating.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• Propertius Aberrant Itineraries Fleeting Moments in the Eternal City: 23
• Varros Roman Ways Metastasis and Etymology: 45
• Obviam The Space of Vehiculation in Latin Literature: 69
• Juvenal in the Specular City: 95
• Gender Geography and Genre Catullus Constructions of Lesbia in Space and Time: 119
• The Space of the Poem Imperial Trajectories in Catullus and Horace: 147
• On Not Being in Rome Exile and Displacement in Senecas Prose: 169
• CarthageRomeMilan Lieux de passage in Augustines Confessions: 195
• Exiled in Rome The Writing of Other Spaces in Tacitus Annales: 215
• The Utopian City in Tacitus Agricola: 235
• Romes Dire Straits Claustrophobic Seas and imperium sine fundo: 261
• Index: 289

About the author

After taking a BA in Classics at Oxford (1974) and a PhD in Comparative Literature at Princeton (1980), William Fitzgerald taught for 23 years in the US, at the University of California, San Diego and Berkeley. He returned to the UK in 2003 and taught at Cambridge University until 2007, when he became Professor of Latin Language and Literature at King's College London. He has published books and articles on Latin literature, especially poetry, and on classical reception. Efrossini (Efi) Spentzou studied first for a degree in Philology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, graduating in 1991, before coming to Oxford to study for an MSt and then a PhD in Classics. She was appointed to Royal Holloway in 2000 where she is now Reader in Latin Literature and Classical Reception. She has published on Latin poetry, notably Ovid, the literature and culture of the late first century AD, and on classical reception; her work focuses on the interfaces between literary theory and Classics.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Production of Space in Latin Literature
• Editors: William Fitzgerald, Efrossini Spentzou
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2018
• ISBN: 0191080489, 9780191080487
• Length: 304 pages
• Subjects: History / Ancient / General; History / Social History; Literary Collections / Ancient & Classical; Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical; Social Science / Archaeology