Afterlives of the Roman Poets

This innovative book reconceptualises Roman poetry and its reception through the lens of fictional biography ('biofiction').

Brings innovations in modern life-writing studies to Roman poetry and its reception. While its core fields are Latin poetry and reception studies, this interdisciplinary book will interest all those working on life-writing. Individual chapters focus on topics in medieval studies, Renaissance studies, Victorian literature, and modernist literature.Conscious of ancient modes of reading poetry 'for the life', Roman poets encoded versions of their lives into their texts. The result is a body of literature that cries out to be read in terms of lives in reception. Afterlives of the Roman Poets shows how the fictional biographies (or 'biofictions') of its authors have shaped the reception of Latin poetry. From medieval biographies of Ovid inscribed in the margins of his texts to republican readings of Lucan's death in periods of revolution to the 'death of the author' in Hermann Broch's Der Tod des Vergil, the book tells a cultural history of the reception of ancient literature as imagined through the lens of poets' lives. Putting modern life-writing studies and ancient poetry into dialogue, it brings biofictional reception to debates in classics, and puts antiquity and its reception onto the map of modern studies in life-writing.