Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies In Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid And Lucan (Roman Literature and its Contexts) - Softcover

O'hara, James J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521646421 ISBN 13: 9780521646420

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Synopsis

How should we react as readers and as critics when two passages in a literary work contradict one another? Classicists once assumed that all inconsistencies in ancient texts needed to be amended, explained away, or lamented. Building on recent work on both Greek and Roman authors, this book explores the possibility of interpreting inconsistencies in Roman epic. After a chapter surveying Greek background material including Homer, tragedy, Plato and the Alexandrians, five chapters argue that comparative study of the literary use of inconsistencies can shed light on major problems in Catullus' Peleus and Thetis, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Lucan's Bellum Civile. Not all inconsistencies can or should be interpreted thematically, but numerous details in these poems, and some ancient and modern theorists, suggest that we can be better readers if we consider how inconsistencies may be functioning in Greek and Roman texts.

About this title

About the Author

James J. O'Hara is George L. Paddison Professor of Latin at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's Aeneid (1990) and True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (1996), as well as numerous articles and reviews on Latin literature.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521646421
• ISBN 13: 9780521646420
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180