Andrew Laird

Sounding Out Ecphrasis: Art and Text in Catullus 64

The term ecphrasis in ancient doctrine denoted any poetic or rhetorical description, including descriptions of landscape ( topothesia ), buildings, battles, and storms. In recent critical idiom it has been narrowed to refer specifically to literary descriptions of visual works of art. This critical focus indicates the interest of the problem of comparing the two media of literature and the visual arts. The great benefit of considering ‘ecphrasis’ in the modern sense is that it forces us to confront both the nature of the visual artistic medium and that of the verbal medium describing it.

Ringing the changes on Gyges: philosophy and the formation of fiction in Plato's Republic *

Glaucon?s story about the ring of invisibility in Republic 359d-60b is examined in order to assess the wider role of fictional fabrication in Plato?s philosophical argument. The first part of the article (I) looks at the close connections this tale has to the account of Gyges in Herodotus (1.8-12). It is argued that Plato exhibits a specific dependence on Herodotus, which suggests Glaucon?s story might be an original invention: the assumption that there must be a lost ?original? to inspire Plato?s story of the ring has never accommodated the possibility of Plato drawing, perhaps quite directly, from Herodotus. The next section (II) considers the function of that fable within the larger philosophical and aesthetic structure of the Republic. Appreciation of the entire dialogue as an exercise in fiction, as well as philosophy, helps to reveal the ways in which philosophical argument and fictional invention are closely bound up in the formation of Glaucon?s fabulous anecdote. Finally (III), a reading of Cicero?s treatment of the story in De Officiis confirms the degree to which philosophical reasoning and fiction can be quite generally interdependent. Although the arguments in Sections II and III are consistent with the opening contention that the ring story was invented by Plato, they do not presuppose it.

Nahuas and Caesars: Classical Learning and Bilingualism in Post-Conquest Mexico; An Inventory of Latin Writings by Authors of the Native Nobility

F ray julián garcés, the first bishop on the American continent, thus described the accomplishment of native Mexican youths in a treatise published in Rome in 1537. 1 The surviving Latin writings from the 1500s by Nahua or “Aztec” authors, however, have received scant scholarly attention. This paper provides the first list of the documents that have so far come to light: these include letters by rulers or other members of the Nahua nobility to the “Caesars” of early modern Europe—the holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and Philip II of Spain. 2 While there will be some treatment of the historical situation of these texts, the present survey will focus on philological and literary issues, particularly echoes of classical authors and the influence of Mexican linguistic features on Latin expression. A preliminary section (I) will briefly describe how youths from native elite families in New Spain came to be instructed in Latin, the kind of education they received, and the books

Colonial grammatology: the versatility and transformation of European letters in sixteenth-century Spanish America

Abstract This paper challenges Walter Mignolo’s influential view that the Renaissance grammarian Nebrija’s theory of writing had a role in justifying Spanish imperialism and that it contributed to the diminution or elimination of native language and memory in the Americas. It will be shown that Isidore of Seville’s comparatively versatile conception of writing, which accommodated pictograms, was far more pervasive in Spain and the New World, fostering parallel advances in written and pictorial communication by indigenous groups, while European letters provided a flexible means of notation for Amerindian languages.

Roman epic theatre? Reception, performance, and the poet in Virgil's Aeneid

Past responses to ancient literature and the reading practices of previous centuries are of central relevance to the contemporary exegesis of Greek and Roman authors. Professional classicists have at last come to recognise this. However, accounts of reception still tend to engage in a traditional form of Nachleben , as they unselfconsciously describe the extent of classical influences on later literary production. This process of influence is not as straightforward as it may first seem. It is often taken for granted in practice, if not in theory, that the movement is in one direction only – from antiquity to some later point - and also that the ancient text which ‘impacts on’ on the culture of a later period is the same ancient text that we apprehend today. Of course it is never the same text, even leaving aside the problems of transmission. The interaction between a text and its reception in another place, in another time, in another text, is really a dynamic two-way process. That interaction (which has much in common with intertextuality) involves, or is rather constituted by, our own interpretation of it.