Tom Geue, "Author Unknown: The Power of Anonymity in Ancient Rome"
English | ISBN: 0674988205 | 2019 | 376 pages | PDF | 3 MB
English | ISBN: 0674988205 | 2019 | 376 pages | PDF | 3 MB
An exploration of the darker corners of ancient Rome to spotlight the strange sorcery of anonymous literature.
From Banksy to Elena Ferrante to the unattributed parchments of ancient Rome, art without clear authorship fascinates and even offends us. Classical scholarship tends to treat this anonymity as a problem or game―a defect to be repaired or mystery to be solved. Author Unknown is the first book to consider anonymity as a site of literary interest rather than a gap that needs filling. We can tether each work to an identity, or we can stand back and ask how the absence of a name affects the meaning and experience of literature.
Tom Geue turns to antiquity to show what the suppression or loss of a name can do for literature. Anonymity supported the illusion of Augustus’s sprawling puppet mastery (
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