THE LITERATURES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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28 Aug
2019
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Criticism and Theory
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Phiroze Vasunia
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Image: Panel of Jeremiah or Ezra, holding/reading a scroll, in the synagogue at Dura Europos
When classical scholars talk about Roman literature, they typically mean literature in Latin or Greek. Many other languages also thrived in the Roman Empire including Aramaic, Demotic, and Hebrew. How should we study these literatures? What kind of frame for multilingual literary study is provided by the Roman Empire? This paper sketches out a preliminary response to these questions by looking at a couple of “Roman” authors (e.g. Longinus, Apuleius) and suggests that we enrich our understanding of Roman literature by reading it in the context of linguistic diversity.
Duration -
August 28, 2019
Timing: 6:30 pm
Registrations Closed
Phiroze Vasunia
Phiroze Vasunia is Professor of Greek at University College London. His publications include The Gift of the Nile (2001), Zarathushtra and the Religion of Ancient Iran (2007), and The Classics and Colonial India (2013). He is the general editor of the series Ancients and Moderns, published by Bloomsbury, and the editor, with Daniel L. Selden, of The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire (forthcoming). He is the principal convenor of a research project entitled 'Comparative Classics: Greece, Rome, India’, from which this paper is drawn.