This scholarly work explores Terence's language within the broader framework of Roman comedy, highlighting its stylistic and thematic elements. It analyzes how Terence's unique approach to dialogue and character development reflects the cultural and social dynamics of his time. By situating his work among other Roman comedic playwrights, the book offers insights into the evolution of comedic language and its impact on the genre.
T. Calpurnius Siculus:A Pastoral Poet in Neronian Rome is the first ever
detailed examination of the whole of Calpurnius' pastoral corpus in English.
It aims to offer an overall picture of Calpurnius' epigonal and generically
transcending poetics and meta-poetics through a thorough comparative analysis
of the generic interfaces between the bucolic host genre (as bequeathed to
Siculus from Theocritus to Vergil) and various generic modes which operate in
Calpurnius' eclogues, such as epic, panegyric, elegiac, didactic/georgic. The
analysis includes themes/motifs, intertexts and allusion, narrative sequences,
diction and metre as well as meta-generic/meta-poetic signs, including
Calpurnius' redirection and inversion of the Callimachean-neoteric
poetological meta-language. The study's interests also revolve around the ways
in which Neronian ideology and imperial politics inform the pastoral narrative
and often account for the formalistic change discerned as well as the manner
in which Post-Classical diction functions as a targeted, self-conscious
linguistic tell-tale of generic evolution. The book is intended for students
or scholars working on or interested in Roman pastoral and its generic
evolution as well as Neronian Literature.
Agonistic or friendly song exchange in idyllic settings forms the very heart of Roman pastoral. It is also a key means of metapoetic stance-taking on the part of the long line of authors who have cultivated this “traditional” genre. The present book examines the motif of song exchange in Roman bucolic poetry under this double aspect: as a central theme with established or constantly forming sub-themes and paraphernalia (thus providing a comprehensive listing, description and analysis of such scenes in the totality of Roman literature), and as the locus where, thanks to its very traditionality, innovative generic tendencies are most easily expressed. Starting from Vergil, and continuing with Calpurnius Siculus, the Einsiedeln Eclogues and Nemesianus, the book focuses on how politics, panegyric, elegy, heroic and didactic poetry function as guest genres within the pastoral host genre, by tracing in detail the evolution of a wide variety of literary, linguistic, stylistic and metrical features.
