The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations

Abstract

Abstract When in 1905 the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature ‘for outstanding services as an epic writer’, it was his novel Quo vadis. A Narrative of the Time of Nero that motivated the committee to bestow this notable honour. The extraordinary international success of Quo vadis catapulted the author into literary stardom, placing him at the top of international league tables for the sheer quantity of his readers. But, before long, the historical novel began to detach itself from the person of its author and to become a multimedial, mass–culture phenomenon. In the West and East, Quo vadis was adapted for the stage and screen, provided the inspiration for works of music and other genres of literature, was transformed into comic strips and illustrated children’s books, and was cited in advertising and referenced in everyday objects of material culture. No work in English to date has explored in depth the mechanisms that released Quo vadis into mass circulation and the influence that its diverse spin-off forms exercised on other areas of culture—even on the reception and interpretation of the literary text itself. In the context of a robust scholarly interest in the processes of literary adaptation and classical reception, and set alongside the recent emergence of interest in the ‘Ben-Hur tradition’, this volume provides a coherent forum for a much-needed exploration, from various disciplinary and national perspectives, of the multimedial transformations of Quo vadis. Uniquely, also, for its English-speaking readers this collection of essays renders more visible the cultural conquests achieved by Poland on the world map of classical reception.