Displaced Persons : The Literature of Exile from Cicero to Boethius

by Claassen, Jo-Marie

• ISBN13: 9780299166441
• ISBN10: 0299166449
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

Exile is a political act involving loss of power. Five authors -- Cicero, Ovid, Seneca the Younger, Dio Chrysostomus, and Anicius Manlius Boethius -- all exiled from Rome, are examined in this fascinating study of the depiction of exile. Although separated from the first four by several centuries, Boethius has an intellectual, circumstantial, and spiritual affinity with them. Jo-Marie Claassen explores the various means of literary sublimation that individual exiles found for the feeling of social and political isolation that they experienced.

Author Biography

Jo-Marie Claassen is Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient Studies at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	1	(6)
The First Stage: Types and Tales Preamble: Setting the stage and priming the canvas	7	(66)
Exiled Persons	9	(27)
Exile, power and sublimation	9	(2)
Exilic and generic taxonomies	11	(4)
Tales of exile: legal, historical and literary sources	15	(4)
The consolatory tradition	19	(3)
Elements of the consolatory genre and their application	22	(5)
Cicero on his own exile: generic variations	27	(2)
Protean Ovid	29	(2)
Multiple `I's': a `truth' stronger than fiction	31	(1)
Ovid's invention without parallel	32	(4)
The Third Person: Exilic Narrative	36	(37)
Myth and literature	36	(12)
Political exile in historical context	48	(20)
History into myth: Ovid's exilic mythologising	68	(5)
The Second Stage: Exilic Outreach Preamble: On the nature of second person exchange	73	(82)
Comfort in Exile	77	(26)
Cicero	77	(8)
Formal consolation	85	(17)
The Protean tradition	102	(1)
From You to Me: Exilic Apeal	103	(29)
Bridging the divide	103	(2)
Cicero's letters of appeal	105	(5)
Ovid's poems as `letters from exile'	110	(4)
Ovid's use of literary epistolary devices	114	(5)
Ovid's poems as portrayal of the conventions of amicitia	119	(3)
Appeal to a god: the exilic poems as prayer	122	(7)
Non-reply by the second person: the rhetoric of silence	129	(2)
Dialogue with posterity	131	(1)
From Me to You: Exilic Invective	132	(23)
Externalising blame	132	(1)
Cieronian invective	133	(6)
Ovid's exilic poems as invective	139	(8)
Defence as attack: Ovid's controversia against Augustus	147	(8)
The Third Stage: Exilic Subjectivity Preamble: Of times and places	155	(50)
Retrospection	158	(24)
Cicero: rewriting history	158	(5)
Dio Chrysostomus: dispassionate appraisal of exile	163	(5)
Boethius: calm after the storm	168	(5)
Ovid: the self before exile	173	(9)
The Horror of Isolation	182	(23)
The inner life	182	(1)
Cicero's exilic myth	183	(2)
Exilic self-sufficiency: time encapsulated and space transcended	185	(5)
Ovid's depiction of his place of exile	190	(8)
The exiled poet in his surroundings	198	(7)
The Fourth Stage: The Poetry of Exile Preamble: Universalising the particular	205	(47)
Generic range in the poetry of exile	207	(22)
Ciceronian epic	207	(3)
Ovid and power	210	(1)
Flebile carmen: Ovid's exilic poetry as elegy	211	(3)
Exilic recusatio: Ovid's apologia pro vita arteque sua	214	(5)
Ovid's answer to the Augustan challenge: the poetry of power repudiated	219	(10)
Exile universalised: Ovid's contribution to the exilic genre	229	(23)
Ovid's use of convention in his exilic poetry	229	(2)
The adynata of exile	231	(2)
Ovidian humour in exile	233	(5)
Imagery: the creation of the metaphors of exile	238	(3)
Poetry ascribed to Seneca	241	(3)
Boethius' elegiacs	244	(8)
Epilogue	252	(7)
Notes	259	(54)
Bibliography	313	(23)
Index Locorum	336	(7)
General Index	343