Critical History of Latin Literature. From Virgil to Huysmans.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 17740 |
| Format | 17 x 24.7 |
| Détails | 652 p., publisher's hardcover with dust jacket. |
| Publication | Paris, 2014 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
What we know of Latin literature and which is presented to us in an impeccable chronological framework is a construction, an appropriation, the fruit of a heroic conquest: works wrested from nothingness by the work of copyists, rediscovered by the Petrarchs, the Poggio Bracciolini, tireless hunters of manuscripts, restored to their textual and historical truth by philologists burning with the ardor eruditionis, disseminated by publishers, translators; constantly reinterpreted, reinvented through a long series of hazards and passionate debates which update the canon, debates which go beyond the academy, inflame the Republic of Letters, mobilize in particular those privileged readers who are the great writers. So these pages, which tell the story of this story, offer, alongside Virgil and Ovid, alongside Politian, Justus Lipsius, Lachmann, the names of Montaigne, Hugo, Laurent Tailhade, Huysmans. Made possible by the numerous works that have been aroused, beyond Humanism, by the interest in the history of reception, the chosen point of view governs the organization of the book. Firstly, detached from the others by their versatile work and gathered under the title, taken from Dante, of "La Bella scuola", four names that have never disappeared from the horizon, major stars in the "sky of Latin literature": Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Ovid. Next, a vast zodiac, are the representatives of the main genres of prose and poetry: Philosophy (Lucretius, Seneca, Platonisms), History, Theatre, Novel, Poetic Genres (Epic, Elegy, Satire, Epigram, Fable and Silve, the "minor" Poets), Letter Writers and Orators and finally Theory of Eloquence. A third part is devoted to technical Literature (Pliny, Vitruvius, etc.) and scholarly Literature (the polygraphs, the grammarians). Written under the learned and sensitive pen of Pierre Laurens, enriched with numerous extracts in translation, the work closes with a fourth part devoted to this stardust that is called "unknown Latin Literature."
What we know of Latin literature and which is presented to us in an impeccable chronological framework is a construction, an appropriation, the fruit of a heroic conquest: works wrested from nothingness by the work of copyists, rediscovered by the Petrarchs, the Poggio Bracciolini, tireless hunters of manuscripts, restored to their textual and historical truth by philologists burning with the ardor eruditionis, disseminated by publishers, translators; constantly reinterpreted, reinvented through a long series of hazards and passionate debates which update the canon, debates which go beyond the academy, inflame the Republic of Letters, mobilize in particular those privileged readers who are the great writers. So these pages, which tell the story of this story, offer, alongside Virgil and Ovid, alongside Politian, Justus Lipsius, Lachmann, the names of Montaigne, Hugo, Laurent Tailhade, Huysmans. Made possible by the numerous works that have been aroused, beyond Humanism, by the interest in the history of reception, the chosen point of view governs the organization of the book. Firstly, detached from the others by their versatile work and gathered under the title, taken from Dante, of "La Bella scuola", four names that have never disappeared from the horizon, major stars in the "sky of Latin literature": Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Ovid. Next, a vast zodiac, are the representatives of the main genres of prose and poetry: Philosophy (Lucretius, Seneca, Platonisms), History, Theatre, Novel, Poetic Genres (Epic, Elegy, Satire, Epigram, Fable and Silve, the "minor" Poets), Letter Writers and Orators and finally Theory of Eloquence. A third part is devoted to technical Literature (Pliny, Vitruvius, etc.) and scholarly Literature (the polygraphs, the grammarians). Written under the learned and sensitive pen of Pierre Laurens, enriched with numerous extracts in translation, the work closes with a fourth part devoted to this stardust that is called "unknown Latin Literature."