This book analyzes the different use of lyric and narrative in Horace's Odes. On the formal level, numerous odes contain narration. Together they tell a larger story about the aesthetic and political demands on the poet's development as a lyrist. At issue is whether Horace can ever truly become a poet of praise.

Horace's Narrative Odes

Literature & Fiction

Lowrie, Michèle

Humor & Satire

Clarendon Press

In Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome Michele Lowrie examines how the Romans conceived of their poetic media. Song has links to the divine through prophecy, while writing offers a more quotisian, but also more realistic way of presenting what a poet does. In a culture of highly polished book production where recitation was the fashion, to claim to sing or to write was one means of self-definition. Lowrie assesses the stakes of poetic claims to one medium or another. Generic definition is an important factor. Epic and lyric have traditional associations with song, while the literacy epistle is obviously written. But issuess of poetic interpretability and power matter even more. The choice of medium contributes to the debate about the relative potency of rival discourses, specifically poetry, politics, and the law. Writing could offer an escape from the social and political demands of the moment by shifting the focus toward the readership of posterity.

Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Civil War and the Collapse of the Social Bond: The Roman Tradition at the Heart of the Modern (Classics after Antiquity)

Can civil war ever be overcome? Can a better order come into being? This book explores how the Roman civil wars of the first century BCE laid the template for addressing perennially urgent questions. The Roman Republic's collapse and Augustus' new Empire have remained ideological battlegrounds to this day. Integrative and disintegrative readings begun in antiquity (Vergil and Lucan) have left their mark on answers given by Christians (Augustine), secular republicans (Victor Hugo), and disillusioned satirists (Michel Houellebecq) alike. France's self-understanding as a new Rome – republican during the Revolution, imperial under successive Napoleons – makes it a special case in the Roman tradition. The same story returns repeatedly. A golden age of restoration glimmers on the horizon, but comes in the guise of a decadent, oriental empire that reintroduces and exposes everything already wrong under the defunct republic. Central to the price of social order is patriarchy's need to subjugate women.

Civil War and the Collapse of the Social Bond (Classics after Antiquity)

History

Ancient Civilizations

Cambridge University Press

Vinken, Barbara

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Books by Lowrie, Michèle