TY  - BOOK
AU  - Newlands,Carole Elizabeth
TI  - Statius' Silvae and the poetics of Empire
SN  - 9780521808910
U1  - 871.01 23
PY  - 2002///
CY  - Cambridge
PB  - Cambridge University Press
KW  - Statius, P. Papinius
KW  - Occasional verse, Latin -- History and criticism
KW  - Laudatory poetry, Latin -- History and criticism
KW  - Imperialism in literature
KW  - Emperors in literature
KW  - Rome -- History -- Domitian, 81-96 -- Historiography
KW  - Rome -- In literature
N2  - "Statius' Silvae, written late in the reign of Domitian (AD 81-96), are a new kind of poetry that confronts the challenge of imperial majesty or private wealth by new poetic strategies and forms. As poems of praise, they delight in poetic excess whether they honour the emperor or the poet's friends. Yet extravagant speech is also capacious speech. It functions as a strategy for conveying the wealth and grandeur of villas, statues and precious works of art, as well as the complex emotions aroused by the material and political culture of empire. The Silvae are the product of a divided, self-fashioning voice: Statius was born in Naples of non-aristocratic parents, and his position as outsider to the culture he celebrates gives him a unique perspective on it.The Silvae are poems of anxiety as well as praise, expressive of the tensions within the later period of Domitian's reign."--Jacket
ER  -