Rome, Pollution and Propriety
Rome, Pollution and Propriety
Rome, Pollution and Propriety brings together scholars from a range of disciplines in order to examine the historical continuity of dirt, disease and hygiene in one environment, and to explore the development and transformation of these ideas alongside major chapters in the city's history, such as early Roman urban development, Roman pagan religion, the medieval Church, the Renaissance, the unification of Italy and the advent of Fascism. This volume sets out to identify the defining characteristics, functions and discourses of pollution in Rome in such realms as disease and medicine, death and burial, sexuality and virginity, prostitution, purity and absolution, personal hygiene and morality, criminality, bodies and cleansing, waste disposal, decay, ruins and urban renovation, as well as studying the means by which that pollution was policed and controlled.
- Examines the history of approaches to dirt and cleanliness in a single environment
- Brings together scholars working in archaeology, anthropology, art history and architecture, classics, and medieval and modern history
- Highlights the role of dirt, disease and hygiene in shaping system and cultural identity
Reviews & endorsements
"A sophisticated analysis … within this volume Rome has become an excellent test study for the examination of theoretical approaches to pollution and purity that should be sought after by students and scholars in anthropology, classical art and archaeology, and social and cultural history."
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"… entertaining and thought-provoking … provides a novel way of thinking about the city of Rome, both past and present."
Zena Kamash, The Journal of Roman Studies
'Rome, Pollution, and Propriety is a series of beautiful chapters offering a collection of inspiring reflections on Rome and its dark sides, approached through case studies spread across two millennia.' Antonella Romano, Isis
Product details
July 2012Adobe eBook Reader
9781139534260
0 pages
0kg
36 b/w illus.
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- Introduction Mark Bradley and Kenneth Stow
- Part I. Antiquity:
- 1. Approaches to pollution and propriety Mark Bradley
- 2. Pollution, religion and society in the Roman world Jack Lennon
- 3. Purification in ancient Rome Elaine Fantham
- 4. Pollution, propriety and urbanism in Republican Rome Penelope Davies
- 5. The 'sacred sewer': tradition and religion in the Cloaca Maxima John Hopkins
- 6. Crime and punishment on the Capitoline Hill Mark Bradley
- 7. On the burial of unchaste Vestal Virgins Celia Schultz
- Part II. Modernity:
- 8. Fra Girolamo Savonarola and the aesthetics of Roman pollution Alessio Assonitis
- 9. Purging filth: plague and responses to it in Rome, 1656–7 David Gentilcore
- 10. Was the ghetto cleaner…? Kenneth Stow
- 11. Urban ablutions: cleansing counter-reformation Rome Katherine Rinne
- 12. The clash of picturesque decay and modern cleanliness in late nineteenth-century Rome Taina Syrjämaa
- 13. Vile bodies: Victorian Protestants in the Roman catacombs Dominic Janes
- 14. Delinquency and pederasty: 'deviant' youngsters in the suburbs of Fascist Rome Martina Salvante
- Envoi. Purity and danger: its life and afterlife Judith Goldstein.
