Project description
Decoding Roman poetry for lower classes
The Romans wrote a lot of poetry and history. Poetry was the most affordable form of art in ancient Rome. Still, the study of Latin poetry has traditionally, almost exclusively, focused on a small canon of texts – that were enjoyed exclusively by the financial elite in those times. The EU-funded MAPPOLA project focuses on the study of some 4 000 Latin verses that have survived from the third century BC that also represent ancient Rome’s middle and lower social strata. MAPPOLA is an unprecedented effort to democratise the understanding of Roman poetry. It aims to forge a new area of empirical and quantitative research, alongside traditional qualitative approaches, into Latin poetry and its European legacy.
Objective
Poetry was the most affordable art form in the Roman world: all it required were words, and someone with a talent to arrange them in a meaningful, aesthetically convincing way. Yet, the study of Latin poetry has traditionally almost exclusively focused on a small, judiciously transmitted canon of texts – a segment of Rome’s artistic production that favours the poetry that was produced, enjoyed, and controlled, by a political, social, and financial urban elite, reinforcing their claim to cultural superiority.
Focusing on a body of over 4,000 Latin verse inscriptions that have survived from the third century B. C. to Late Antiquity and cover the Roman empire in its entirety, representing ancient Rome’s middle and lower social strata in particular, MAPPOLA is an unprecedented effort to democratise our understanding of Roman poetry.
A fundamentally multidisciplinary project that will make use of recent methodological advances in linguistic, historical, and archaeological scholarship, MAPPOLA’s prime aim is fundamentally to reassess the verse inscriptions as evidence for poetry as a ubiquitous, inclusive cultural practice of the people of ancient Rome beyond the palaces of its urban aristocracy. It will provide answers to the following questions: How is the empire’s considerable regional and ethnic diversity reflected in the engagement with inscribed verse? How and where did poetic landscapes emerge, and what inspired them? What was the cultural and social significance of inscribed Latin verse? How did subcultures and poetic subversion take shape? How did inscribed poetry transcend and transgress artificially imposed boundaries and abstractions?
Over five years, organised into five integrated Work Packages and firmly rooted in the PI’s long-term vision, MAPPOLA will open a new area of empirical and quantitative research, alongside traditional qualititative approaches, into Latin poetry and its European legacy.
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Funding Scheme
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantHost institution
1010 Wien
Austria