Paris, a New Rome / / ed. by Michèle Lowrie, Barbara Vinken.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2024 Part 1
• MitwirkendeR: Alonge, Tristan,; Elm, Susanna,; Frisch, Andrea,; Hardie, Philip,; Haverkamp, Anselm,; Leopold, Stephan,; Lowrie, Michèle,; Norman, Larry F.,; Steinberg, Michael P.,; Tauber, Christine,; Vinken, Barbara,
• HerausgeberIn: Lowrie, Michèle,; Vinken, Barbara,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2024]; ©2024
• Year of Publication: 2024
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (VIII, 230 p.)

However shared the Roman inheritance may be, it hardly unifies. Which Rome is the model, the Republic or the Empire? The Rome of imperial conquest or of civil war? By whom is it ruled? By the glorious conqueror who extended universal peace, the rule of law, and infrastructure – roads and aqueducts – or by the detested tyrant who imposed domination? Or worse, the corruptor of republican liberty and source of putrefying decadence? Rome always returns, but which Rome? France presents itself as a privileged locus for Rome’s return since the beginnings of its history. The perennial recourse to ancient Rome – as model or anti-model – binds together a cohesive tradition. The logic of this gesture asserts a unity beyond modern identity politics, which depend on defining a “them” against “us,” to resist nativist assumptions about national character, French, German, Italian, American, etc. All share the same polysemous inheritance, for good or ill. All are Roman and all resist Rome without needing to agree on what exactly is shared. The unity underlying the discourse, however, no longer depends on defining Rome as an origin. Instead, Rome’s figuration persists discursively, as a translation: to be translated time and time again.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Introduction: With and Against Rome -- I Before Paris -- “Le Jour de Gloire” – Augustine of Hippo on Glory, Renewal, and the Law of War in the City of God (Book 1) -- Second Romes, and no Sense of an Ending -- II Early Classicisms -- Néron et Louis XIV au miroir racinien : monstre ou grand prince naissant ? -- Versailles, A New Rome? Perrault and the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns -- III Classicism Enlightened and Revolutionized -- Translatio laudum. Rubens’ Maria de’ Medici cycle, and Voltaire’s Henriade -- Jacques-Louis David’s Roman Revolutions in Paris -- IV Romanticism and Realism -- Heinrich von Kleist’s Napoleanic Romans in the Teutonic Woods -- Empire – Typologie – Apocalypse -- V Palimpsests beyond Origins -- Calendars, Commemoration, Containment: The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre(s) and Roman Practices of Commemorating Defeat -- The Cry of Laocoön. Myths and Countermyths of the Founding of Cities -- Epilogue: Before Rome -- List of Contributors -- Figure Credits