Title Pestilence and the body politic in Latin literature / Hunter H. Gardner

Edition First edition Published Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2019

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Description 1 online resource (x, 303 pages) : illusrations (black and white) Contents Introduction: Experiments in plague discourse -- Part I. Tabula Rasa: A New Kind of Plague Narrative -- Roman pestilence : tenor and vehicle -- Livy, Pestilentia, and the pathologies of class strife -- Part II. Experiments in Apocalyptic Thinking -- Human and civic corpora in Lucretius’ Athenian plague -- Plague, civil war, and epochal evolution in Vergil’s Georgics -- Ovid’s Origin of the Myrmidons and the New Augustan Order -- Part III. Transmitting Roman Plague -- Imperial receptions : Lucan, Seneca, and Silius Italicus -- Relapse : transmitting Roman plague in the West Summary Lucretius, Vergil, and Ovid developed important conventions of the Western plague narrative as a response to the breakdown of the Roman res publica in the mid-first century CE and the reconstitution of stabilized government under the Augustan Principate (31 BCE–14 CE). Relying on the metaphoric relationship between the human body and the body politic, these authors use largely fictive representations of epidemic disease to address the collapse of the social order and suggest remedies for its recovery. Plague as such functions frequently in Roman texts to enact a drama in which the concerns of the individual must be weighed against those of the collective. In order to understand the figurative potential of plague, this book evaluates the reality of epidemic disease in Rome, in light of twentieth-century theories of plague discourse, those of Artaud, Foucault, Sontag, and Girard, in particular. Pestilence and the Body Politic in Latin Literature identifies consistent features of the outbreaks described by Roman epic poets, charting the emergence of Golden-Age imagery, emphasis on bodily dissolution, and poignant accounts of broken familial bonds. Such features are expressed through Roman idioms that provocatively recall the discourse of civil strife that characterized the last century of the Roman Republic. The final chapters examine key moments in the resurgence of Roman plague topoi, beginning with early imperial poets (Lucan, Seneca, and Silius Italicus), and concluding with discussion of late antique Christian poetry, paintings of the late Italian Renaissance, and Anglo-American novels and films Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Online resource; title from web page (Oxford Scholarship Online, viewed May 19, 2020) Subject Latin literature -- History and criticism Diseases in literature. Epidemics -- Psychological aspects Epidemics -- Rome -- History Epidemics in literature. Medicine in literature. Medicine in Literature Epidemics -- Psychological aspects Latin literature Epidemics Diseases in literature Epidemics in literature Rome (Empire) Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780191837708 0191837709 9780192516350 0192516353

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