Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority [Hardcover]

This advanced introduction to Horace examines his poetry as works of literature and important social acts.This book is an advanced introduction to Horace which treats his whole poetic career and all of the genres in which he worked. Oliensis focusses on the social dimensions of Horace's poetry, considering how Horace shapes his poems and his books to promote his authority while also paying deference to his eminent patrons. The combination of scope, social emphasis, and theoretically informed close readings is what distinguishes this book from other current treatments of Horace.This book is an advanced introduction to Horace which treats his whole poetic career and all of the genres in which he worked. Oliensis focusses on the social dimensions of Horace's poetry, considering how Horace shapes his poems and his books to promote his authority while also paying deference to his eminent patrons. The combination of scope, social emphasis, and theoretically informed close readings is what distinguishes this book from other current treatments of Horace.Ths book is an advanced introduction to Horace that treats his whole poetic career and all of the genres in which he worked. Oliensis focuses on the social dimensions of Horace's poetry, considering how Horace shaped his poems and his books to promote his authority while also paying deference to his eminent patrons. The combination of scope, social emphasis, and theoretically informed close readings is what distinguishes this book from other current treatments of Horace.Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Face-saving and self-defacement in the Satires; 2. Making faces at the mirror: the Epodes and the civil war; 3. Acts of enclosure: the ideology of form in the Odes; 4. Overreading the Epistles; 5. The art of self-fashioning in the Ars poetica; Postscript: Odes 4.3; Works cited; Poems discussed; General index. This is a thoughtful, stimulating, and engaging book, and Oliensis's approach holds great promise for l³A