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The Roman Audience - Classical Literature as Social History (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R3,638
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The Roman Audience - Classical Literature as Social History (Hardcover)
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Who were Roman authors writing for? Only a minority of the
population was fully literate and books were very expensive,
individually hand-written on imported papyrus. So does it follow
that great poets and prose authors like Virgil and Livy, Ovid and
Petronius, were writing only for the cultured and the privileged?
It is this modern consensus that is challenged in this volume. In
an ambitious overview of a thousand years of history, from the
formation of the city-state of Rome to the establishment of a fully
Christian culture, T. P. Wiseman examines the evidence for the oral
delivery of 'literature' to mass public audiences. The treatment is
chronological, utilizing wherever possible contemporary sources and
the close reading of texts. Wiseman sees the history of Roman
literature as an integral part of the social and political history
of the Roman people, and draws some very unexpected inferences from
the evidence that survives. In particular, he emphasizes the
significance of the annual series of 'stage games' (ludi scaenici),
and reveals the hitherto unexplored common ground of literature,
drama, and dance. Direct, accessible, and clearly written, The
Roman Audience provides a fundamental reinterpretation of Roman
literature as part of the historical experience of the Roman
people, making it essential reading for all Latinists and Roman
historians.
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