This new edition broadens the scope of Fantham's study of literary
production and its reception in Rome.
Scholars of ancient literature have often focused on the works and lives
of major authors rather than on such questions as how these works were
produced and who read them. In Roman Literary Culture, Elaine Fantham
fills that void by examining the changing social and historical context
of literary production in ancient Rome and its empire.
Fantham's first edition discussed the habits of Roman readers and
developments in their means of access to literature, from booksellers
and copyists to pirated publications and libraries. She examines the
issues of patronage and the utility of literature and shows how the
constraints of the physical object itself--the ancient
"book"--influenced the practice of both reading and writing. She also
explores the ways in which ancient criticism and critical attitudes
reflected cultural assumptions of the time.
In this second edition, Fantham expands the scope of her study. In the
new first chapter, she examines the beginning of Roman literature--more
than a century before the critical studies of Cicero and Varro. She
discusses broader entertainment culture, which consisted of live
performances of comedy and tragedy as well as oral presentations of the
epic. A new final chapter looks at Pagan and Christian literature from
the third to fifth centuries, showing how this period in Roman
literature reflected its foundations in the literary culture of the late
republic and Augustan age. This edition also includes a new preface and
an updated bibliography.
