Intertextuality and the Reading of Roman Poetry

by Edmunds, Lowell

• ISBN13: 9780801877414
• ISBN10: 0801877415
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-12-01
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

How can we explain the process by which a literary text refers to another text? For the past decade and a half, intertextuality has been a central concern of scholars and readers of Roman poetry. In Intertextuality and the Reading of Roman Poetry, Lowell Edmunds proceeds from such fundamental concepts as "author," "text," and "reader," which he then applies to passages from Vergil, Horace, Ovid, and Catullus. Edmunds combines close readings of poems with analysis of recent theoretical models to argue that allusion has no linguistic or semiotic basis: there is nothing in addition to the alluding words that causes the allusion or the reference to be made. Intertextuality is a matter of reading.

Author Biography

Lowell Edmunds is a professor of classics at Rutgers University. His many books include Approaches to Greek Myth; Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues; and Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece all available in paperback from Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	xi
ONE Text	1	(18)
TWO Poet	19	(20)
THREE Reader	39	(24)
FOUR Persona	63	(20)
FIVE Addressee: A Dialogue	83	(12)
SIX Possible Worlds	95	(13)
SEVEN Reading in Rome, First Century B.C.E.	108	(25)
EIGHT Intertextuality: Terms and Theory	133	(31)
Conclusion	164