Jackie Elliott has won a College Scholar Award, which she will use to support the completion of the following two projects:
-
A听short, introductory volume on听Early Roman Poetry, for Brill鈥檚听Research Perspectives in Classical Poetry听series. This volume will offer听an overview of current scholarship and interpretive trends in the area of early Roman poetry,听laying out key questions about the Roman literary record at its origin, and registering the oddity of the fact that a literature developed at Rome at all, when this is by no means a necessary feature of ancient societies. It will detail the pre-literary written record at Rome, as best we can access it, and seek to explain how this record underwrites the features of language that emerge in the fragments of Roman poetry as we encounter them, from the date our record begins (239听BCE). It will engage issues of definition and periodicity; lay out the record itself of early Roman poetry, in its unavoidable relationship to prose, and explain the conceptual framework according to which the ancient world categorized and understood that record; it will explain the sources of our knowledge of that record and the ways that these complicate our access to it; and it will define the consequences of those complications for the task of the editor who sets out to present the record of early Roman poetry to the more general reader.听
- A monograph:听The History of Cato鈥�s听Origines.听Cato鈥檚听Origines听(鈥淥rigins鈥�) was by any account a remarkable听work.听Written听by one of the leading Roman statesmen of the mid-second century听BCE,听it was the first prose history of Rome in Latin and was听subsequently construed as the foundation of the tradition of Roman historical听writing. The听work exists today only as a series of fragments quoted in the听works of later authors of antiquity. Not least for that reason, the听Origines听presents us with a听series of听interpretive puzzles, the answers to which define the parameters of our听reconstructions of the history of Roman historical writing and its place听in the听intellectual life of the Roman Republic and the Empire that followed. Underlying听these puzzles, and relevant to our response to each of them, is听the question of听the ancient transmission, circulation and reception of the听Origines: that is, who read the work, in听what听contexts, how they interpreted it, and why and how they chose to quote it and听thus to pass it on to other readers. This history of ancient readers and听of听ancient reading is in fact traceable: though the surviving evidence only puts听us in a position to tell a small part of the full story of a work鈥檚 ancient听circulation and reception, such a history is, in fact, the aspect of the work听that our challenging evidence best allows us to address. If carried out in听detail,听it can provide an invaluable guide through the intricate maze of our听ancient evidence, able to illuminate perspectives yet to be explored while also听showing why established interpretive avenues or indeed broad assumptions about听a given work mislead. This project on Cato鈥檚听Origines听first undertakes听such a detailed history of the work鈥檚 ancient transmission听and reception; this then informs an exploration of larger questions about听Cato鈥檚 self-positioning听as author and relationship to his contemporary and听subsequent audiences, with glances across to counterpoised genres, such as听epic, that also sought to听address the relationship of the Roman past to the听Roman present as contemporary audiences experienced it.
One of the larger questions at听issue in the conversations this project engages is that of the role literature听played in spreading the sense of a听cohesive Roman identity across an听at-this-time increasingly far-flung Roman sphere of influence. It is sometimes argued or assumed that听pride of place in this function would have gone to works of Roman prose听history. The findings of this project to date听regarding how and by whom听works of听history were read do not support that notion; the public genre of epic is, in听the view these findings afford, a far stronger candidate for听celebrating Roman听collective achievement and for promoting an understanding, able to permeate the听strata of Roman society at large, of what it meant to听be Roman.
Jackie will first work on these two projects in Berlin as a Humboldt Foundation fellowship recipient (2020-21); she will complete them during her fall 2021 sabbatical and her spring 2022 tenure of the College Scholar Award.