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Uniting close readings of major authors of the late Republic and early Empire with the careful analysis of the material forms that Roman writing took--papyrus scrolls, waxed tablets, and monumental inscriptions in stone and bronze--
Empire of Letters provides new ways of imagining the history of the book in the pre-modern world, showing how writing was essential to ancient Roman beliefs and practice.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction: More Than Words
- Chapter 1: Classics and the Study of the Book
- Chapter 2: Writing and Identity
- Chapter 3: The Text of the World
- Chapter 4: Tablets of Memory
- Chapter 5: The Roman Poetry Book
- Chapter 6: Ovid and the Inscriptions
- Conclusion: Texts and Objects
- References
- Index locorum
- Index
About the author
Stephanie Ann Frampton is a classicist, comparatist, and historian of the book in antiquity. She is Associate Professor of Classical Literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Summary
Shedding new light on the history of the book in antiquity, Empire of Letters tells the story of writing at Rome at the pivotal moment of transition from Republic to Empire (c. 55 BCE-15 CE). By uniting close readings of the period's major authors with detailed analysis of material texts, it argues that the physical embodiments of writing were essential to the worldviews and self-fashioning of authors whose works took shape in them. Whether in wooden tablets, papyrus bookrolls, monumental writing in stone and bronze, or through the alphabet itself, Roman authors both idealized and competed with writing's textual forms.
The academic study of the history of the book has arisen largely out of the textual abundance of the age of print, focusing on the Renaissance and after. But fewer than fifty fragments of classical Roman bookrolls survive, and even fewer lines of poetry. Understanding the history of the ancient Roman book requires us to think differently about this evidence, placing it into the context of other kinds of textual forms that survive in greater numbers, from the fragments of Greek papyri preserved in the garbage heaps of Egypt to the Latin graffiti still visible on the walls of the cities destroyed by Vesuvius. By attending carefully to this kind of material in conjunction with the rich literary testimony of the period, Empire of Letters exposes the importance of textuality itself to Roman authors, and puts the written word back at the center of Roman literature.
Additional text
Frampton explores the fascinating minutiae of the physical act of writing in Roman antiquityâ. For those of us who love the Roman literary tradition,ÂEmpire of LettersÂimmerses us in the grit and gravel of Lucretius' and Virgil's tools of the trade, giving classically-minded readers the delightful opportunity to feel the papyrus and smell the wax.
