Overview
Can civil war ever be overcome? Can a better order come into being? This book explores how the Roman civil wars of the first century BCE laid the template for addressing perennially urgent questions. The Roman Republic's collapse and Augustus' new Empire have remained ideological battlegrounds to this day. Integrative and disintegrative readings begun in antiquity (Vergil and Lucan) have left their mark on answers given by Christians (Augustine), secular republicans (Victor Hugo), and disillusioned satirists (Michel Houellebecq) alike. France's self-understanding as a new Rome – republican during the Revolution, imperial under successive Napoleons – makes it a special case in the Roman tradition. The same story returns repeatedly. A golden age of restoration glimmers on the horizon, but comes in the guise of a decadent, oriental empire that reintroduces and exposes everything already wrong under the defunct republic. Central to the price of social order is patriarchy's need to subjugate women.
Full Product Details
Author: Michèle Lowrie (University of Chicago) ,
Barbara Vinken (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Weight: 0.621kg
ISBN: 9781009014281
ISBN 10: 1009014285
Pages: 382
Publication Date: 02 November 2023
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
'Mich�le Lowrie and Barbara Vinken's book addresses an important topic at a crucial moment ... this is an important and challenging book ...' Samuel Agbamu, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
'Michèle Lowrie and Barbara Vinken's book addresses an important topic at a crucial moment ... this is an important and challenging book ...' Samuel Agbamu, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Author Information
Michèle Lowrie is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor of Classics and the College, University of Chicago. She is the author of Horace's Narrative Odes (1997) and Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome (2009) and had edited Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Horace's Odes and Epodes (2009), and co-edited Exemplarity and Singularity: Thinking through Particulars in Philosophy, Literature, and Law (2015) and The Aesthetics of Empire and the Reception of Vergil (2006). Barbara Vinken is chair of French and Comparative Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. Her most recent books include Krieg als Opfer? Franz Marc illustriert Gustave Flauberts 'Legende des Heiligen Julian' (2021), Bel Ami. In diesem Babylon leben wir noch immer (2020) and Flaubert Postsecular: Modernity Crossed Out (2015).
