- Description
- 1 online resource.
- Summary
- "This ambitious book investigates a major yet underexplored nexus of themes in Roman cultural history: the evolving tropes of enclosure, retreat and compressed space within expanding, potentially borderless empire. In Roman writers' exploration of real and symbolic enclosures - caves, corners, villas, bathhouses, the 'prison' of the human body itself - we see the aesthetic, philosophical and political intersecting in fascinating ways, as the machine of empire is recast in tighter and tighter shapes. Victoria Rimell brings ideas and methods from literary theory, cultural studies and philosophy to bear on an extraordinary range of ancient texts rarely studied in juxtaposition, from Horace's Odes, Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Ibis, to Seneca's Letters, Statius' Achilleid and Tacitus' Annals. A series of epilogues puts these texts in conceptual dialogue with our own contemporary art world, and emphasizes the role Rome's imagination has played in the history of Western thinking about space, security and dwelling"--
- Subject
- Genre/Form
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Contents
- Cover; Half-title; Title page; Copyright information; Dedication; Table of contents; List of figures; Acknowledgements; Note on texts, translations and abbreviations; Introduction; Chapter 1 Empire without end; condere in Virgil's Aeneid; Excavating foundation myths: from Aeneid 1 to Tacitus Annals 16; Digging the dirt: Suetonius' Nero; Epilogue; Roman Ondák: the underground art scene; Chapter 2 All four corners of the world; Lyric's realm: the angulus; The violence of the edge: beyond lyric; Epilogue; Anish Kapoor's dirty corners; Chapter 3 Roman philosophy and the house of being.
- Codes of confinement: from corners to circlesThe refuge-cum-den: tight spots; Shaking out metaphor: (se) excutere; Epilogue; Rachel Whiteread's casts: sculpture inside out; Chapter 4 Blood, sweat and fears in the Roman baths; Singing in the bath: Seneca Epistles 56; The writing on the stall: Scipio's shower; Martial 6.42 and Statius Silvae 1.5: inside Etruscus' baths; Vitruvius' baths: the height of sophistication; Epilogue; Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Bathroom; Chapter 5 Imperial enclosure, epic spectacle; Launching the Aeneid: Georgics 1-4; Lucan's prisons: empire's small worlds.
- Watch the mountain shrink: Statius' AchilleidEpilogue; David Blaine's magic: the hero enclosed; Chapter 6 The homeless problem; Home from Rome; Tristia 2 and the illusion of security; Inside the burning bull: Tristia 3.11; Ibis: exploding enclosure, unmaking elegy; Epilogue; Adrian Paci: Home to Go; Bibliography; Index locorum; Subject index.
- ISBN
- 9781316374603
- 1316374602
- 9781139941532
- 1139941534
- OCLC
- 910935563
- Author
Rimell, Victoria, author.
- Title
The closure of space in Roman poetics : empire's inward turn / Victoria Rimell.
- Publisher
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- Copyright Date
©2015
- Type of Content
text
- Type of Medium
computer
- Type of Carrier
online resource
- Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Source of description
Print version record.
- Connect to:
- Other Form:
Print version: Rimell, Victoria. Closure of space in Roman poetics 9781107079267 (DLC) 2014049355 (OCoLC)900559493