Roman Poets in Modern Guise: The Reception of Roman Poetry since World War I by Theodore Ziolkowski

Abstract

MLR, .,   engage with terms in the original language, revealing their multiple or shiing meanings). Overall, however, the collection demonstrates the importance of poetry to modern continental thinkers and offers a valuable study of their responses. U  B E W Roman Poets in Modern Guise: e Reception of Roman Poetry since World War I. By T Z. (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. . xiv+ pp. £. ISBN ––––. It is sad to think that eodore Ziolkowski, a faithful contributor to this journal, will never see this review. His death in December  means that, as this publication makes clear, we have lost someone who remained an active and stimulating author to the end. Potential readers of this wide-ranging study should not be misled by the title of the series in which it has been published, which suggests a specifically Germanic focus. As Ziolkowski points out, it concentrates at least as much on his other area of specialization, the anglophone literature of the United States and of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with a particular focus, where appropriate, on contrasts between the two. In addition, figures such as Gide, Valéry, Calvino, Kristeva, and others outside those two linguistic areas make appearances where appropriate. Although both wide-ranging and extremely erudite, the study does not seek to be exhaustive, but instead looks at a selection of key Roman authors in chronological order, relating them to the period in which they were writing. Hence Part : ‘Augustan Echoes’ is devoted to Virgil, the Eclogues rather than the Aeneid, and Horace, Part : ‘Republican Counterpoints’ to Lucretius, Catullus, and Propertius, and Part : ‘Imperial Dissonances’ to Ovid, Seneca, and Juvenal. e influences explored are literary, be it poetry, novels, plays, or essays, and the nature of the in- fluences ranges from quotation, adaptation, and translation to the use of biography as a plot device. A key feature of the study, and perhaps its most interesting aspect, is the way in which Ziolkowski relates the response to the various authors at different periods to political and cultural developments and changes which influence the interest in specific authors and works, and also the national differences, which mean that these differ from country to country. Although there is no shortage of examples of British and Irish authors or, as we have seen, those from other European countries being influenced by these classical authors, the rise of National Socialism and its aermath in Germany and the presidential nature of US politics seem to have made authors from these countries particularly ready to identify with the Roman model. Some authors have functioned as repositories of quotations either to be embraced with pleasure or to be disagreed with (Wilfred Owen, as Ziolkowski shows, was not the only writer to take issue with Horace’s ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’), others, such as Catullus, provide material for speculative biographical fiction, although he also, from the s on, provides an  Reviews excuse for otherwise respectable translators to talk dirty. A particularly interesting pattern emerges in the case of Ovid, whose popularity not only alternates with that of Virgil, but in different periods homes in either on the works dealing with exile or on those dealing with love and metamorphosis. ere will be few, if any, readers of this study who are familiar with all the twentieth- and twenty-first-century authors evoked here, and so a degree of summary is oen required, something that is more successful in the case of the poetic works than the more narrative texts, which require lengthier exposition, but the ground covered remains impressive. is is a rewarding study which inspires regret for the passing of the age of the classical education. S U D C e Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural eory. Ed. by J R. D L. London: Bloomsbury. . xiii+ pp. £. ISBN ––– –. e Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural eory is the latest in a long line of texts aiming to introduce students to the body of theoretical work that underpins contemporary literary and cultural studies. is has always been a difficult task, drawing as it does on so...