Introductory description

This module will investigate how the vulnerable body is represented and debated in Roman literature and thought. Over the course of the year, you will be developing skills in the close reading of literary texts and in the critical analysis of classical scholarship, but you'll also be encouraged to explore how critical thinking in other fields about corporeality, embodiment and precarity might inform and inspire new approaches to classical texts. As we delve into some of the most rambunctious, sharp and shocking works that survive in Latin from the first century BC to the first century AD, we will be exploring how form, content and poetics relate to broader questions about identity, politics and ethics in early imperial Rome. A wide range of texts and genres will be considered, but individual lectures and seminars will be devoted to single authors and texts, and you will be able to narrow your focus in the termly essays.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

This module will investigate what being vulnerable, weak, impotent, invalid or dependent meant in
the Roman world. To what extent did vulnerability give rise to moral and ethical obligations, in a
context in which invulnerability defined the dignified citizen male against a series of soft,
wounded, twisted, disabled and penetrable bodies? Were those who embodied vulnerability ever
heard, or only written over/on? In what ways was Roman literature ‘fleshy’? To what extent do
Latin literary texts reproduce the body as a product of institutionalised knowledge and control? As
we work our way through a wide range of texts from the Republican period to the late first century
CE, from satire, fable, erotic elegy and iambic to imperial epic and the philosophical letter, we will explore how bodily (in)vulnerability becomes the currency in which much of what we know as ‘Latin literature’ trades – as a means of probing boundaries between the human and non-human, between the masculine and feminine, or between the free and the enslaved; as a metaphorical system for describing rhetorical performance or invoking the materiality of texts; as a cast for poses of inferiority, including Latin literature’s ‘inferiority complex’ in relation to Greek predecessors; or as provocative imagery in Roman representations of erotic and imperial desire. The module will also debate how Roman thinking about vulnerability (particularly in terms of gender and ageing) may be similar to and different from our own. General bibliography includes examples of recent work in various fields on precarity in the modern world, which we will touch on throughout the year.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• acquired a broad understanding of the various ways in which vulnerable bodies are represented and debated in classical Latin literature.
• learnt to appreciate how the form, content and poetics of the texts under consideration relate to broader questions about identity, gender, politics and ethics in 1st century BCE-1st century CE Rome.
• developed their skills in the close reading of literary texts.
• developed their skills in the critical analysis of classical scholarship.
• awareness of the comparative dimensions of studying Roman literature and thought.
• developed the ability to set their findings into a wider comparative context, drawing in other aspects of the study of the ancient world;
• engaged creatively with a wider range of secondary literature that includes discussion of classical literature within broader comparative, including critical-theoretical, frames.

Indicative reading list

Barton, T. (1994) Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics and Medicine
in the Roman Empire. Michigan.
Berzins-McCoy, M. (2013) Wounded Heroes. Vulnerability as a Virtue in Ancient
Greek Literature and Philosophy. Oxford.
Bradley, K. (1987) Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social
Control. Oxford.
Braund, S. and Gold, B.K (eds.) (1998) Vile Bodies. Roman Satire and Corporeal
Discourse. Arethusa 31. Baltimore.
Brison, S. (2003) Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of the Self. Princeton.
Butler, J. (2004) Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London
and New York.
Edwards, C. (1993) The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge.
Fineman, M. (2013) The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human
Condition. Princeton.
Fitzgerald, W. (2000) Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination. Cambridge.
Gunderson, Erik (2000) Staging Masculinity. The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World.
Ann Arbor.
Hillman, D. and Maude, U (eds.) (2015) The Cambridge Companion to the Body in
Literature. Cambridge.
Laes, C., Goodey, C.F. and Lynn Rose, M. (eds.) (2013) Disabilities in the Roman
Antiquity: Disparate Bodies. Leiden and Boston.
Langlands, R. (2006) Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge.
Mackenzie, C., Rogers, W., and Dodds, S. (eds.) (2014) Vulnerability: New Essays
in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy. Oxford.
Monserrat, D. (ed.) (1997) Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings. Studies of the
Body in Antiquity. London and New York.
Parkin, T. (2003) Old Age in the Roman World. Johns Hopkins.
Porter, J. (ed.) (1999) Constructions of the Classical Body. Ann Arbor.
Romm, J. (2014) Dying Every Day. Seneca at the Court of Nero. New York.
Valttinen, T. (2015) ‘The power of the vulnerable body’ in The International
Feminist Journal of Politics 17.1.
Williams, C. (1998) Roman Homosexuality. Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical
Antiquity. Oxford.
Worman, N. (2009) ‘Bodies and Topographies in Ancient Stylistic Theory’ in
T.Fögen and M.M.Lee (eds.) Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman
Antiquity. Berlin and New York, 45-62.
Wyke, M. (ed.) (1998) Parchments of Gender: Deciphering the Bodies of Antiquity.

Subject specific skills

Students will...

• acquire a broad understanding of the various ways in which vulnerable bodies are represented and debated in classical Latin literature;
• appreciate how the form, content and poetics of the texts under consideration relate to broader questions about identity, gender, politics and ethics in 1st century BCE-1st century CE Rome;
• develop skills in the close reading of literary texts;
• develop skills in the critical analysis of classical scholarship;
• gain awareness of comparative dimensions in the study of Latin literature, Roman culture, and thought

In additional, final year students will

• develop the ability to set findings into a wider comparative context, drawing in other aspects of the study of the ancient world;
• engage creatively with a wider range of secondary literature that includes discussion of classical literature within broader comparative, including critical-theoretical, frames.

Transferable skills

• critical thinking
• problem solving
• active lifelong learning
• communication
• information literacy
• ICT literacy
• professionalism