Offspring of Stephen Harrison's fertile 2007 monograph, G(eneric) E(nrichment in Vergil and Horace), this heterogeneous brood of twenty-three takes on ‘encounters, interactions and transformations’ in Latin genre shows that this (sub-)field continues to thrive. Whereas GE's aim was fixed squarely on intergeneric moments within six seminal texts of two cardinal authors, G(eneric) I(nterfaces) extends such an approach, together with numerous other kindred variations, to a much broader temporal and generic array.
Such internal variety could be programmatic, as if GI's own multifariousness enacts a version of an argument apparently underlying most of its constituent parts. The familiar image of the farrago of Roman Satire might seem a pungent emblem here, but in fact, as ‘(post-)modern’ (1) theoretical approaches to genre have rendered generic identity more fleeting(ly) than ever, and as most of the genres evoked in this collection are themselves shown to contain disparate generic elements, just about any GI genus would do if pressed into service. And this basic insight, that genres are constituted, at least in part, by other genres, is a powerful backdrop to these papers, even if it is treated with varying degrees of caution. But GI steers clear of proclaiming the impossibility of literary classification (à ‘La loi du genre’) via a threefold system of interpretation, graduated according to scope: Mode (1) close unpacking of specific textual moments which themselves stage a synkrisis of ‘guest’ and ‘host’ elements (GE's terms; let's call it Meta-Intergeneric Intertextuality); Mode (2) fresh, reinvigorating re-examination of a particular (often neglected) author, work, genre or sub-genre within the context of generic expectations, usually multiple and/or contrasting (say, Interpretative Generics); and Mode (3) more abstract or theoretical genre schematization, synchronic or diachronic (speculative ‘Genre Systematics’).
The volume gets going with Harrison's accessible lead-in. One salutary side-effect of his neat synopsis of ancient and modern genre theory (itself a GE-cutting) is a bracing reminder to track the metaphors which have quietly propped up past arguments: for example, and most relevantly for Classics, Brunetière's Darwinian évolution des genres propagating Kroll's compelling Kreuzung, but even the Russian Formalists’ divergent account of literariness figured as exogamy. Harrison's preface ends with an outline of GI's components; below follows yet another digest (inevitably brief and selective) of representative essays, according to the scheme devised above.
For the first course (Mode 1), Cowan dissects Lucretius' frightful feast (3.73) to argue that the demythologizing poet has indeed cooked in a sound bite from Accius' Atreus, but, by blending it into a context where Roman veneficium would jibe, has defiantly cut off the tag's flavour of cannibalism in order to show consumers of DRN that Tragedy's genre does not belong to this recipe for philosophical didactic. Cowan's ‘anti-allusion’ is an absorbing paradox (the tragic meal's aftertaste lingers in spite of Lucretius) that deserves chewing over in future. Picking through the wreckage of a different genre-clash, Zissos hones our scholarly forensics of Lucan's collision with Caesar's commentarii. Spinning off Henderson and Masters, he retraces key steps in Lucan's metaliterarity (especially 9.983–6) to press for a generic rivalry — or rather, occlusion (a process emblematized in the updated editions of the Dyrrachium siege and Scaeva's virtus): Lucan's epic comes to bury Caesar's own memoranda (palimpsest-like) and ‘pauses’ when it runs out of material to write over.
The pieces on shepherd songs challenge transcription. Papanghelis lines out an interpretation of Eclogues which would amplify its ‘fiction of orality’ rather than recording the latter as a mere stand-in for textuality: unless we use this take, he warns, the fixed opposition of the pastoral-elegy generic pairing performed by Gallus' ‘vegetable writing’ in 10.52–4 will be drowned out. In counterpoint to such generic ‘intransigence’, Karakasis' reading of Calpurnius 3 makes out a newly stereophonic rendition of pastoral; the distinct presence of elegiac and comic strains in the eclogue is heard out with sustained (nearing commentary-length) sensitivity to the Latin.
Frangoulidis and Ash each work out a modified version of Mode 1 by latching on to textual moments where a generic crossing is enacted (more or less) within the frame of representation — valuable as glimpses of broader cultural discursive interactions. For paraclausithyron, which Frangoulidis sees as helping prop up the drama of Plautus' Curculio, must have extended beyond the strictly literary. And while Ash, who presents a fascinating reading of Tacitus' Tiberius as ‘satirist’ (in his letter ad senatum, Ann. 3.53–4), is careful to stress this as Tacitus' scripting, the possibility of a Princeps adopting such a discursive stance ‘outside’ of a literary text remains suggestive.
Most of the papers exhibiting Mode 2 are stand-alone, and will repay (re)reading for some time: the below terse summaries are merely sandwich-boards. Newlands' overview of the genre (mode?) of architectural ecphrasis sketches the wider landscape of ecphrasis before tracing its foundations and walking through its full construction in Statius' Silvae and successors: well worth a visit. Volk refuses to concede to under-examined assumptions surrounding Cicero's De consulatu suo, and takes it seriously as boldly innovative and genre-crossing: self-promotion notwithstanding, Cicero's is an epic of peacetime civics (cedant etc. functioning metapoetically, as recusatio). Satire is handled twice, noteworthily. Muecke's piece nears Mode 3 in its broader implications regarding genre creation. This brisk remodelling of satire notes how, despite Quintilian's assertion, research into Greek strands has sidelined Roman tributaries: readings of two passages from comedy play up that genre's rôle as substrate. Freudenburg's subtle-yet-expansive archaeology of Roman (and ‘our’) attempts to define satire defies paraphrase. Under the guise of a reading of Horace's Sermones 2 via Varro's Menippeans treads a larger disentangling of the ancient twofold division of satire (verse and mixed).
Two prose treatments stand out. Gibson (pursuing issues addressed by Beard on Cicero's correspondence) delivers a penetrating exploration of the generic mobility of the ancient letter collection. Kraus offers a similarly illuminating story of historia's generic identity, first by unravelling its connection to other varieties of prose (especially oratory), then by laying bare its internal generic parts; all of which is then epitomized through a probing close reading of Caesar's metaliterary enlistment of diverse generic insignia in his account of the first invasion of Britain (BG 4.24–5). As an acute rendering of a prose passage's generic polyvocality, this analysis breaks new ground.
Readers will also want to follow Hinds and Hardie on their leading-edge sallies into Genre Reception as played out in, respectively, Claudian and Renaissance Epic. The former is an insight-powered generator of possible intersections in the De raptu Proserpina between late imperial epic intertextuality and genre thematics, the latter a fascinating foray into biblical epic's subsuming of overtly neoclassical (i.e., pagan) genres (Virgilian pastoral, Horatian lyric) — part of the power and problematics of these Christian narratives' universalizing vision. Both essays evince the potential of genre dynamics to be re-theorized and realigned in unfamiliar terrain.
Putting Genre Systematics to the test (Mode 3, alongside Kahane and Fuhrer), Hutchinson thinks super-sized about genre form and content, with a bird's-eye procedure that is the volume's most P/peripatetic. His ‘super-genres’ — hexameters, elegiacs, lyric and drama — represent a higher-order system abstract enough to defamiliarize and empirical enough to respect ancient metre-based approaches. The special power of this thrilling superimposition is in reconciling disparate elements (e.g., prophecy's presence in epic); it should prompt further engagements with such theoretical Venn diagrammatics.
