Exemplary ethics in ancient Rome / Rebecca Langlands.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Langlands, Rebecca, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics--Rome.

Ethics.

Ethics, Ancient.

Exempla.

Rome (Empire).

Physical Description:

xi, 368 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Summary:

"The well-known mythographer Marina Warner has described the process of reading fairy tales and folktales as 'tasting the dragon's blood' - a magical and transformative process by which one's ears are opened to the voices of the past and of other worlds. Roman exempla, which constitute a national story-telling tradition, are very different in many ways from the dream-like fantasies of fairy-tales and other narrative folk traditions that have been the subject of Warner's studies. In (supposedly) true stories from history, battle-hardened warriors, noble maidens and honourable sons of the soil face impossible dangers, take terrible decisions and sacrifice their lives, their limbs and even their own children for the sake of justice, discipline and the Roman community. Yet for the ancient Romans too, hearing the blood-soaked stories of their ancestral heroes was an intimate and potent experience, and this 'taste of the hero's blood' had an intoxicating effect similar to the blood of Warner's dragon: evoking other worlds, shaping understanding of their own world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Roman values and the archetypal exemplum

The special capacity of exemplary stories

Exploitation, participation and the social function exempla

The experience of learning from exempla

Multiplicity, breadth, diversity and situational sensitivity in exemplary ethics

Working consensus around Roman exempla

Indeterminacy of exempla : interpretation, motivation and improvisation

Sites of exemplarity : referentiality, memory, orality

The dynamics of cultural memory : forgetting, rupture, contestation

Changing sites of exemplarity : two case studies

Diachronic overview of the exemplary terrain

Controversial thinking through exempla

Philosophical and literary adventures in the exemplary terrain.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781107040601

1107040604

OCLC:

1028524893