Morals and Villas in Seneca's Letters
Morals and Villas in Seneca's Letters
Places to Dwell
John Henderson focuses on three key Letters visiting three Roman villas, and reveals their meaning as designs for contrasting lives. Seneca brings the philosophical epistle to Latin literature, creating models for moralizing which feature self-criticism, parody, and animated revision of myth. The Stoic moralist wrests writing away from Greek gurus and texts, and recasts it into critical thinking in Latin terms, within a Roman context. The Letters embody critical thinking on metaphor and translation, self-transformation and cultural tradition.
- Features in-depth study of key letters in Seneca's collection, with fresh translations
- Combines approaches to the Roman villa and its owners from literary criticism, history, politics, cultural history, philosophy, myth and religion
- Surveys, interprets, and enthuses over the whole of this classic work from one of the major figures of ancient Rome, whose writings are set for a wave of re-evaluation
Product details
April 2007Paperback
9780521036221
200 pages
229 × 154 × 13 mm
0.308kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1. Twelve steps to haven
- 2. Dropping in (it) at SENECA'S
- 3. You can get used to anything
- 4. The long and winding mode
- 5. Booking us in
- 6. Now and then
- here and there: at SCIPIO'S
- 7. Bound for VATIA'S
- 8. Knocking the self: genuflexion, villafication, VATIA'S
- 9. The world of the bath-house: SCIPIO'S
- 10. The appliance of science: SCIPIO'S
- 11. Shafts of light: transplantation and transfiguration
- 12. Still olive, still SCIPIO'S
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Indexes.
