Classical Literary Careers and their Reception

Book excerpt: This is a wide-ranging collection of essays on ancient Roman literary careers and their reception in later European literature, with contributions by leading experts. Starting from the three major Roman models for constructing a literary career - Virgil (the rota Vergiliana), Horace, and Ovid - the volume then looks at alternative and counter-models in antiquity: Propertius, Juvenal, Cicero and Pliny. A range of post-antique responses to the ancient patterns are then examined, from Dante to Wordsworth, and including Petrarch, Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell, Dryden, and Goethe. These chapters pose the question of the continuing relevance of ancient career models as ideas of authorship change over the centuries, leading to varying engagements and disengagements with classical literary careers. There are also chapters on other ways of concluding or extending a literary career: bookburning and figurative metempsychosis.