Rome's Literature of Transformation

Catalog description

In Latin, the verb convertere, literally "to turn," can refer both to the physical metamorphosis of an object or creature and to the translation of a text from one language to another; the same word also gives us our English vocabulary of religious conversion. This course will explore the relationships between these different kinds of transformation in four major works of Latin literature: Lucretius's De Rerum Natura, Ovid's Metamorphoses , Apuleius's Golden Ass and Augustine's Confessions. Although these texts are very different from one another— they include a radically materialist philosophical poem, a mythological counter-epic, a picaresque novel whose narrator is magically turned into a donkey, and an autobiographical profession of Christian faith— they share a deep concern with the nature of personal identity and its relationship to writing. Over the course of the semester, we will track these common interests, while also situating each of our texts in its particular historical, social, and intellectual contexts; we will also want to consider the ways in which Latin literature's persistent concern with transformation reflects the distinctive hybridity of Roman culture. Finally, all four of our texts played an important role in the cultural transformations of the European Renaissance, so, in addition to our core Roman materials, we will also read works by later authors, including Petrarch, Montaigne, and Shakespeare. All readings will be in English.