Pestilence and the Body Politic in Latin Literature

Bibliographic Data

ID9296016
AuthorsHunter H Gardner (Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, University of South Carolina, corresponding author)
Year2019
Pages320
Publication date2019-07-11
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenuePestilence and the Body Politic in Latin Literature (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198796428.001.0001
OpenAlexW2969965473
Open LibraryOL28717373M
ISBN9780198796428
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited74

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

Body politic · Political science · Politics · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Law · Diseases in literature · Epidemics · Epidemics in literature · History and criticism · Latin literature · Rome