Review of D. Lowe, Monsters & Monstrosity in Augustan Poetry
(2016) The Classical Review — Vol. 66, n° 2, p. 420-422 (2016)
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- Abstract
- Part cabinet of curiosities, part literary-historical critique, this book makes a strong case that the socio-cultural, intertextual, scientific and political complexity of certain misanthropic hybridised hominid monsters helped Augustan poets discuss poetry and its ends. Through a rich succession of innovative, intricate readings of monsters in the poetry of Virgil, Horace and Ovid, L. further clarifies, often with greater textual and historical nuance than ever before, the sense that Augustan ‘monstrosity’ reflected and innovated very specific gendered (and often medicalised) stereotypes, with male monsters like the Cyclops and Hundred-Handers generally typified by their strength and epic scale, female monsters like the Harpies and Scylla, by contrast, by their (grotesquely sexualised) miasmic ooze of liquids and emotions. Taken as a whole, this book represents an extensive, if not exhaustive, Roman teratypology that will prove a valuable resource for the study of Augustan culture and pre-medieval monster-theory, even as it falls short of making the stronger case that there might be something monstrous not only within, but about, Augustan poetry itself.
- Affiliations
University of Miami University of Miami
Citations
Kachuck, A. (2016). Review of D. Lowe, Monsters & Monstrosity in Augustan Poetry. The Classical Review, 66(2), 420-422. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/100946 (Original work published 2016)