A Symposion of Praise
Subtitle: Horace Returns to Lyric in Odes IV (Wisconsin Studies in Classics)
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: January 27, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9780299207403
Subjects: Poetry & poets: classical, early & medieval; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Latin; Ancient - General; Ancient and Classical; General; Literary Criticism & Collections / Ancient & Classical; Carmina; History and criticism; Horace; Laudatory poetry, Latin; Liber 4; Lyric poetry; Odes, Latin
Description: "Ten years after publishing his first collection of lyric poetry, Odes I-III, Horace (65 B.C.-8 B.C.) returned to lyric and published another book of fifteen odes, Odes IV. These later lyrics, which praise Augustus, the imperial family, and other political insiders, have often been treated more as propaganda than art. But in A Symposion of Praise, Timothy Johnson examines the richly textured ambiguities of Odes IV that elevate the book beyond propaganda and engage the audience in the communal or "sympotic" formulation of Horace's praise. Through this wider lens of Horatian lyric, Johnson provides a critical reassessment of the nature of public and private in ancient Rome. A Symposion of Praise will be of interest to historians of the Augustan period and its literature and to scholars interested in the dynamics between personal expression and political power."--Jacket.