[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
This collection of eighteen essays on the use and reuse of Latin poetry in the ancient world and beyond is dedicated to Susanna Braund, Professor of Latin Poetry and Its Reception at the University of British Columbia, on the occasion of her retirement. It seems common for reviews of edited collections to complain about limited connections between contributions, varying levels of adherence to a collection’s purported theme, or that some chapters are better than others. This review will do none of these things. Aside from the high quality of the individual chapters, the strength of this book is that the chapters are thematically interlinked and well connected to one another.
The collection focuses on tracing influences: of Greek epic and philosophy on Latin authors, of ideas of kingship across ancient cultures, and of Classical authors, especially Virgil, on later Latin poets. The first three parts focus on what seem to be traditional concerns for Classicists, and scholars of the authors and texts discussed in these chapters will no doubt find much of interest. The fourth and longest part, forms the most interesting section of the volume, dealing with questions of modern reception ranging from the seventeenth-century authors Gavin Douglas and Famiano Strada to a discussion of the deployment of the Aeneid in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend.
The sections are organised chronologically, with discussion of issues of Roman kingship occupying the first section, and issues of discussion of modern receptions in the final section. In the first chapter, Farrell addresses the transmission of Homeric ideas of kingship in Latin poetry, demonstrating how Latin authors adapted his ideas to the ethical concerns of their own work, in particular a focus on the importance of prioritising wisdom over strength. Latin authors’ debts to Greek ideas finds further exploration in Keith’s discussion of the origins of Virgil’s ideas of good kingship in contemporary philosophy and its relationship with the past. Knight continues this discussion of good kingship in the works of Virgil, discussing the similarities and differences between ideas of rulership expressed in both Virgil’s Georgics and Seneca’s De Clementia. Like many of the contributors, Barchiesi engages deeply and directly with Braund’s work, and analyses how Statius’ Achilleid engages with both the Iliad and its reception to participate in Roman conversations about the nature and purpose of imperial power.
In the second section, contributors engage with the different ways in which the work of classical authors might cross the boundaries of genre. In the first two chapters (Wilson and van den Berg), this is done through cross-comparison of the works of two authors. Wilson compares Livy’s and Ovid’s accounts of the banishment and return of Rome’s guild of musicians, the tibicines, to show how history might be retold as comedy. It is a nice segue into discussion of actual comedy and its unexpectedly intellectual roots. Knowledge of Plato, van den Berg convincingly argues, affords a deeper appreciation of the jokes in Plautus’ Pseudolus. The section’s themes of genre-crossing and comparison are taken to their widest extent by James, whose comparanda for encounters between mortals and gods draws in part on modern film and television (including, excellently, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), to understand how audiences react to the appearance of gods in stories. The section concludes with Pagán’s nuanced and thoughtful evaluation of sincerity in Tacitus, through the reciprocal relationship between poet, ruler, and audience; this chapter draws deeply on Braund’s work.
The third section provided three perspectives on ways that Latin literature uses intertexts. In the first of these chapters, O’Hogan discusses how Lucan engages with the writings of Virgil and Julius Caesar in his depiction of Caesar as a failed epic hero. Virgil was of course the intertext par excellence for many Latin authors after him; McClellan convincingly demonstrates how attention to Prudentius’ engagement with both Virgil and the Bible reveals additional layers of Virgilian allusions. These are turned to new uses in Christian Latin poetry. In the final chapter of this section, Hardie asks what difference Christianity made to Latin authors’ use of Classical imagery and allegory, concluding that despite their religious differences, Claudian and Paulinus of Nola shared a clear debt to a common Classical heritage.
The chapters in the last section have the widest range, and are perhaps the most appealing and interesting to non-specialists. By its very nature, the study of classical reception is wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, and the diverse array of receptions studied in this section bear witness to a multiplicity of approaches. In a chapter on the efforts of the late medieval Scottish poet Gavin Douglas to translate the Aeneid into vernacular Scots, Newlands focuses on a case study of the Scots translations of the names of birds and their calls. Douglas, he demonstrates, was not just trying to convey the meaning and significance of the Latin literature’s aviary but was instead updating and repurposing Classical themes in his own context and setting. A second chapter on early modern receptions discusses the reception of Famiano Strado’s Latin poetry in the style of Claudian, which had considerable popularity in seventeenth-century Latin teaching, and was translated numerous times into English. Gillespie introduces the intriguing idea of ‘afterings’—those poems which are not straightforward translations, but which depend on a deep knowledge of a Classical original and a reader’s awareness of the ways in which a new work both depends on and departs from the author’s model. This chapter opens up exciting possibilities for further study—as Gillsepie notes, the ‘afterings’ of contemporary poets are rarely studied.
We move into the eighteenth century with Osgood’s chapter on how reading Juvenal shaped Edward Gibbon’s approach to writing history. Gibbon both used Juvenal as a source and sought to historicise him and understand him in context. Reading Juvenal, Osgood suggests, may have helped Gibbon decide on the overall shape of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as satire rather than tragedy.
The final chapters address allusions to the classical tradition in music and literature from the nineteenth century to the present. Gladhill’s chapter traces allusions to Classical literature in Moby Dick—a task which, as the author elegantly illustrates, is well beyond the scope of a single chapter, and indeed has filled entire books and encyclopedias. Rather than adding to such a long list of references, Gladhill takes a different tack, focusing on Melville’s interest in the process of translation and reception, seen through the books he read and owned, revealing Melville’s awareness of his place in the world of literature.
The final three chapters widen the picture of what classical receptions involve. Libretti seem like a fertile, if perhaps understudied, area of reception studies. Harrison’s chapter discusses the fertile collaboration between the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (not himself a Latinist) and the French Latinist and future Jesuit Jean Daniélou, to produce the libretto for the opera Oedipus Rex. The linguistic choices made by Daniélou and the Latinists who influenced him in turn influenced Stravinksy’s musical writing. The other twentieth century chapter provides a very welcome addition to the study of classical receptions among women writers. Torlone argues that the Russian poets Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) and Anna Akhmatova (1887–1966) both chose themes which allowed them to focus on the silencing of women’s voices. The theme of women’s voices creates a thematic link with the final chapter, in which Pache explores the classical references found in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, particularly focusing on the importance of Aeneid 4 for both protagonists, Lila and Lenù. Depictions of female friendships are exceptionally scanty in classical literature, and Pache convincingly shows how Ferrante reimagines and transcends these gaps.
This is a rich and wide-ranging collection of essays. While it can sometimes be the case that an edited volume is purchased or picked up for the sake of a few of its essays, the scope and quality of the contributions in this book make this a book worth perusing with pleasure. Chapters speak, directly or indirectly, to each other, and are organised into sections which develop a clear progression of ideas. Additionally, they are united by a deep level of engagement with the work of the honorand. My first reaction, on finishing Latin Poetry and Its Receptions, was that Professor Braund’s students, colleagues and friends are lucky to know a scholar with such curiosity, generosity, and intellectual breadth. This book will be a valuable addition to personal and academic libraries of books on Latin poetry and its long afterlife.
Authors and Titles
Roman Kingship
1. Kingship Theory in Latin Poetry, 240–20 BCE, Joseph Farrell
2. The Good King According to Virgil in the Aeneid, Alison Keith
3.The Nature and Nurture of Kingship in Virgil’s Georgics and Seneca’s De Clementia, Jayne Knight
Genre Crossing
4. Rege sub uno: On the Politics of Statius’ Achilleid, Alessandro Barchiesi
5. The Return of the Tibicines in Livy and Ovid, Marcus Wilson
6. Phaedrus in the Forum: Plautus’ Pseudolus and Plato’s Phaedrus, Christopher S. van den Berg
7. When Mortals Meet Gods in Classical and Contemporary Contexts, Paula James
8. Tacitean Inflections of Sincerity, Victoria Emma Pagán
Imperial Intertexts
9. The Burial of Misenus and Lucan’s De Bello Ciuili, Cillian O’Hogan
10. Mens Humilis vs. Superbia in Prudentius’ Psychomachia, Andrew M. McClellan
11. Keeping the Faith: Allegory in Late Antique Panegyric and Hagiography, Philip Hardie
Modern Receptions
12. Gavin Douglas’s Cranes and Other Classical Birds, Carole Newlands
13. After Strada: English Responses to Strada’s Nightingale (Prolusiones 2.6), with texts of four previously unprinted versions, Stuart Gillespie
14. Gibbon and Juvenal, Josiah Osgood
15. Into the Maw: Melville and the Classical Tradition, Bill Gladhill
16. Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex: The Libretto, Stephen Harrison
17. Muted Voices: Marina Tsvetaeva’s and Anna Akhmatova’s Classical Heroines, Zara Torlone
18. Translating Friendship: My Brilliant Friend and the Aeneid, Corinne Pache