Written in stone
Subtitle: literary representations of the statue in the Roman Empire
By: by Melissa Haynes
Published: 2009
Language: eng
Description: My aim in the present study is to offer a close analysis of the ways in which statues function in the literature of the Roman Empire from the Augustan period to the highpoint of the Second Sophistic in the late 2 nd and early 3 rd centuries CE. In their presentation of the literary statue, Roman authors manipulate the defining criteria of the sculpted medium--fixity, materiality and silence. My analysis of the strategies employed by Imperial authors in 'writing' the statue reassesses the presentation of art in a literary context and how the sculpted medium challenges simple description. I have structured my dissertation as a series of case studies that analyze the unique features of the statue and their translation from a visual to a literary medium. In particular, I investigate the sculptural medium's negotiable relationship to an original source or model; the consequences of resemblance to and approximation of life; and the challenge posed to the primacy of text with regard to fixing permanence and effectively representing 'reality.' These areas of inquiry also include a consideration of the sculptor as a creator-figure, especially in the case of religious or cult images as well as the use of statues as a metaphorical field in the sexualized description of female beauty.

I begin my inquiry with an analysis of the statue in Ovid's Metamorphoses as a methodological introduction. I then turn to a consideration of several related themes: resemblance and the portrait statue (Pliny the Younger), the issues of replication and substitution (Histories of Tacitus; Favorinus' Corinthian Oration ), canonical artists and the sculpting of the divine (Propertius 4.2), the perspective that integrates viewing and reading as parallel and interrelated processes--something I term 'epigrammatic viewing' ( Silvae 1.1 and 4.6), and finally, the metaphorical complex that writes women as statues and how that affects the text through reciprocality (Petronius' Satyricon 126-132). In my conclusion, I analyze a fictional letter by Alciphron that puts on display the portrait statue, divine images, and the confrontation between model and image, as well as the relationship between artist, model and statue.
Notes: "January 2009."

Thesis (Ph.D., Dept. of Classics)--Harvard University, 2009.

Includes bibliographical references.