Details

Subject(s)

• Latin poetry—History and criticism [Browse]
• Latin poetry—Appreciation [Browse]
• Authors and readers—Rome [Browse]
• Reader-response criticism [Browse]

Series

• Cornell studies in classical philology. [More in this series]
• Cornell Studies in Classical Philology

Summary note

When we think of Roman Poetry, the names most likely to come to mind are Vergil, Horace, and Ovid, who flourished during the age of Augustus. The genius of Imperial poets such as Juvenal, Martial, and Statius is now generally recognized, but the final years of the Roman Empire are not normally associated with poetic achievement. Recently, however, classical scholars have begun reassessing a number of poets from Late Antiquity-names such as Ausonius, Claudian, and Prudentius-understanding them as artists of considerable talent and influence. In The Space That Remains, Aaron Pelttari offers the first systematic study of these fourth-century poets since Michael Robert's foundational The Jeweled Style (Cornell, 1989). It is the first to give equal attention to both Christian and Pagan poetry and the first to take seriously the issue of readership. Like the Roman Empire, Latin literature was in a state of flux during the fourth century. As Pelttari shows, the period marked a turn towards forms of writing that privilege the reader's active involvement in shaping the meaning of the text. In the poetry of Ausonius, Claudian, and Prudentius we can see the increasing importance of distinctions between old and new, ancient and modern, forgotten and remembered. The strange traditionalism and verbalism of the day often concealed a desire for immediacy and presence. We can see these changes most clearly in the expectations placed upon readers. The space that remains is the space that the reader comes to inhabit, as would increasingly become the case in the literature of the Latin Middle Ages.

Notes

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Target audience

Specialized.

Source of description

Description based on print version record.

Language note

English

Contents

• Front matter
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Late Antique Poetry and the Figure of the Reader
• 1. Text, Interpretation, and Authority
• 2. Prefaces and the Reader's Approach to the Text
• 3. Open Texts and Layers of Meaning
• 4. The Presence of the Reader: Allusion in Late Antiquity
• Conclusion
• References
• General Index
• Index of Passages Cited

Show 10 more Contents items

Other format(s)

Issued also in print.

ISBN

• 1-5017-5205-7
• 0-8014-5499-9
• 0-8014-5500-6

OCLC

• 891381780
• 890435065
• 1013943958
• 1029827758
• 1032692929
• 1037982437
• 1041991120
• 1046612013
• 1046995493
• 1049684896
• 1054880615
• 979910307
• 922998725

Doi

• 10.7591/9780801455001

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