Horace
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Beyond the Public Poetry
R. O. A. M. Lyne
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Format: PaperPrice: $26.00
Lyne's personal and historical approach focuses on the poet's relations with his patron Maecenas, with the Emperor Augustus, and with other grandees. Closely analyzing poems from Satires, Odes, and Epistles, Lyne reveals not only the magnificence of Horace's public literature, but the private man behind it. He shows how Horace neatly balanced deference with the careful assertion of his own social and political standing.
According to Lyne, Horace was a master of private insinuation, as well as a skilled maker of public poetry. He was also a master in the art of ordering his works: exactly where a poem occurs is often of the subtlest importance. Lyne also examines the resumption of the great political lyric in the Odes of Book 4 (set aside in 23 B.C.), and contends that, beneath the public face, Horace here exhibited resentment, recording views that undermined earlier patriotic statements.
"Full of good sense, careful reasoning, and meticulously close attention to the text."— Joseph Farrell, University of Pennsylvania
"This intelligent and sharp-witted book deliberately sets its face against certain recent trends in the criticism of Horace. It will assuredly provoke thought and discussion."—Philip Hardie, Classical Views
"A bold, in many respects revisionary, attempt to locate the genesis of Horace's poetry in his curriculum vitae. . . . In sum, read for individual insights to individual poems, Lyne's work has much of value to offer students of Horace and of Latin literature."—Michael C.J. Putnam, Vergilius
"Lyne is an intelligent and knowledgeable reader of poems."—Michèle Lowrie, New York University Classical Journal
Publication Date: July 23, 2013
