10% off all books and free delivery over £50
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.

Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome

View All Editions (1)

The selected edition of this book is not available to buy right now.
Add To Wishlist
Write A Review

About

Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome Synopsis

In Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome Michele Lowrie examines how the Romans conceived of their poetic media. Song has links to the divine through prophecy, while writing offers a more quotidian, but also more realistic way of presenting what a poet does. In a culture of highly polished book production where recitation was the fashion, to claim to sing or to write was one means of self-definition. Lowrie assesses the stakes of poetic claims to one medium or another. Generic definition is an important factor. Epic and lyric have traditional associations with song, while the literary epistle is obviously written. But issues of poetic interpretability and power matter even more. The choice of medium contributes to the debate about the relative potency of rival discourses, specifically poetry, politics, and the law. Writing could offer an escape from the social and political demands of the moment by shifting the focus toward the readership of posterity.

About This Edition

ISBN: 9780199545674
Publication date:
Author: Michele Professor of Classics, University of Chicago Lowrie
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Format: Hardback
Pagination: 448 pages
Genres: Literary studies: poetry and poets
Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval