A01=Thomas N. Habinek
Aphorism
Ars Poetica (Horace)
Augustan literature
Augustan poetry
Author_Thomas N. Habinek
Banditry
Barbarism (linguistics)
Category=DSBB
Category=NHC
Category=NHD
Catiline
Catullus
Classical Latin
Classics
Comparative literature
Critical Essays (Orwell)
Culture and Imperialism
Culture war
Cynicism (philosophy)
De Agri Cultura
Declamation
Demetrius the Cynic
Disciplina
English poetry
Ennius
Epigram
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Erudition
G. (novel)
Ideology
Latin grammar
Latin literature
Latin poetry
Latinus
Latrocinium
Literary criticism
Literary theory
Literature
Livius Andronicus
Mos maiorum
New Criticism
Paradoxa Stoicorum
Patrician (ancient Rome)
Patronage in ancient Rome
Persius
Perusine War
Philosopher
Plautus
Poetry
Poetry of Catullus
Political philosophy
Politique
Principate
Res publica
Rhetoric
Roman conquest of Italy
Roman Empire
Roman Government
Roman historiography
Roman mythology
Roman Religion
Romanticism
Satire
Scholasticism
Sextus Pompey
Suetonius
Sumptuary law
Terence
The Philosopher
The Postmodern Condition
The Roman Revolution
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
Tristia
War
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691089843
- Weight: 369g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 03 Dec 2001
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
This is the first book to describe the intimate relationship between Latin literature and the politics of ancient Rome. Until now, most scholars have viewed classical Latin literature as a product of aesthetic concerns. Thomas Habinek shows, however, that literature was also a cultural practice that emerged from and intervened in the political and social struggles at the heart of the Roman world. Habinek considers major works by such authors as Cato, Cicero, Horace, Ovid, and Seneca. He shows that, from its beginnings in the late third century b.c. to its eclipse by Christian literature six hundred years later, classical literature served the evolving interests of Roman and, more particularly, aristocratic power. It fostered a prestige dialect, for example; it appropriated the cultural resources of dominated and colonized communities; and it helped to defuse potentially explosive challenges to prevailing values and authority. Literature also drew upon and enhanced other forms of social authority, such as patriarchy, religious ritual, cultural identity, and the aristocratic procedure of self-scrutiny, or existimatio.
Habinek's analysis of the relationship between language and power in classical Rome breaks from the long Romantic tradition of viewing Roman authors as world-weary figures, aloof from mundane political concerns--a view, he shows, that usually reflects how scholars have seen themselves. The Politics of Latin Literature will stimulate new interest in the historical context of Latin literature and help to integrate classical studies into ongoing debates about the sociology of writing.
Thomas N. Habinek is Professor of Classics at the University of Southern California and author of The Colometry of Latin Prose.
