The Search for the Self in Statius' ›Thebaid‹ : : Identity, Intertext and the Sublime / / Jean-Michel Hulls.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Ebook Package English 2021
• VerfasserIn: Hulls, Jean-Michel,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes , 116
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XLV, 275 p.)

The aim of this project is to provide a sustained analysis of the concept of ‘self’ in Statius’ Thebaid. It is this project’s contention that the poem is profoundly interested in ideas of identity and selfhood. The poem stages itself as a metapoetic exploration of the difficulties for a belated epicist in finding a place in the literary canon; it shows the impossibility of squaring large-scale epic poetics with small-scale, finely-wrought Callimacheanism; it reflects the violent disjunction between Statius’ authorial pose as a poet without power and the extreme violence of his poetics; it opens up the intricacies of constructing original, coherent characters out of intertextual, exemplary models. The central tenet of the project is that Statius in the Thebaid stages his own 'death', but does so that his poem may live. This book is intended for an academic audience including undergraduate and graduate students as well as specialists in the field. Although the project will be of primary importance to readers of Flavian literature, it will also be of interest to those who study intertextuality and characterisation in Roman literature more generally, selfhood and identity in Roman literature and culture and the reception of Roman literature.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 Vagus exul: Polynices and the Search for the Self -- 2 Identity Politics: Exploring Tyranny in the Thebaid -- 3 Nil ego: Oedipus, Theseus and Poetic Identity -- 4 Unde iubetis ire, deae? Statius and Poetic Identity -- 5 Afterword? Per te poeta fui: Dante’s Statius and the Re-Writing of Literary History -- Bibliography -- Index Rerum et Nominum -- Index οf Sources