The Production of Space in Latin Literature

Recent decades have seen a marked shift in approaches to cultural analysis, with the critical role of location and spatial experience in the formation of the human subject gaining increasing prominence. Henri Lefebvre's La Production de l'Espace (1974), a seminal work in what is now called the 'spatial turn' in the humanities, stresses that space is to be included among the sites of hegemonic power and ideological contestation in a society: it is not simply a neutral setting within which human action takes place. This idea has obvious relevance to the study of ancient Rome, in which space was formative, yet also contested, and could be endowed with cultural meaning by the uses its citizens made of it and the ways in which they put it into play.

This volume applies the insights and concerns of the 'spatial turn' to this specifically Roman engagement with space, and explores its representation and manipulation in Latin literature. The terrain covered by the contributions is broad, both temporally (from Catullus to St Augustine) and in terms of genre, with lyric, epic, elegy, satire, epistolography, and historiography all finding their place. Discussions focus mainly on movement and the mobile subject in the experience and making of space, rather than fixed monumental space within which a subject moves and acts. Offering a detailed exploration of Roman engagement with space, the ideological stakes of this engagement, and its intersections with empire, urbanism, identity, ethics, exile, and history, the volume contains a wealth of insights for readers across and beyond the discipline of classical studies: those looking equally for new approaches to ancient texts and authors or to explore the relationship between the materiality of antiquity and its literary aspects will find these discussions illuminating.

William Fitzgerald, Professor of Latin Language and Literature, King's College London,Efrossini Spentzou, Reader in Latin Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London

After taking a BA in Classics at Oxford (1974) and a PhD in Comparative Literature at Princeton (1980), William Fitzgerald taught for 23 years in the US, at the University of California, San Diego and Berkeley. He returned to the UK in 2003 and taught at Cambridge University until 2007, when he became Professor of Latin Language and Literature at King's College London. He has published books and articles on Latin literature, especially poetry, and on classical reception.

Efrossini (Efi) Spentzou studied first for a degree in Philology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, graduating in 1991, before coming to Oxford to study for an MSt and then a PhD in Classics. She was appointed to Royal Holloway in 2000 where she is now Reader in Latin Literature and Classical Reception. She has published on Latin poetry, notably Ovid, the literature and culture of the late first century AD, and on classical reception; her work focuses on the interfaces between literary theory and Classics.

Frontmatter
List of Contributors
0. Introduction, William Fitzgerald and Efrossini Spentzou
1. Propertius' Aberrant Itineraries: Fleeting Moments in the Eternal City, Efrossini Spentzou
2. Varro's Roman Ways: Metastasis and Etymology, Diana Spencer
3. Obviam: The Space of Vehiculation in Latin Literature, Jared Hudson
4. Juvenal in the Specular City, David H. J. Larmour
5. Gender, Geography, and Genre: Catullus' Constructions of Lesbia in Space and Time, Maxine Lewis
6. The Space of the Poem: Imperial Trajectories in Catullus and Horace, William Fitzgerald
7. On Not Being in Rome: Exile and Displacement in Seneca's Prose, Catharine Edwards
8. Carthage Rome Milan: 'Lieux de passage' in Augustine's Confessions, Therese Fuhrer
9. Exiled in Rome: The Writing of Other Spaces in Tacitus' Annales, Shreyaa Bhatt
10. The Utopian City in Tacitus' Agricola, Richard Alston
11. Rome's Dire Straits: Claustrophobic Seas and imperium sine fundo, Victoria Rimell
Endmatter
Index