Building in Words: The Process of Construction in Latin Literature(Classical Culture and Society)

Building in Words explores the relationship between text and architecture in the Roman world from the perspective of architectural process. Ancient Romans frequently encountered buildings under construction - they experienced noisy building work, disruptive transportation of materials, and sometimes spectacular engineering feats. Bettina Reitz-Joosse analyzes how Roman authors responded to the process of building and construction in their literary works. Roman authors tell stories of architectural creation to give meaning to finished monuments. Their narratives can stress technological or logistic mastery or highlight morally problematic aspects of construction, particularly in large-scale engineering projects. While offering descriptions of the process of creating architecture, Roman writers also reflect on the creation of their own works. Building in Words demonstrates the richness of the image of construction for literary composition: writers use it to comment on the aesthetics or ambition of their literary work, to articulate the power and durability, but also the fragility of literature.Reitz-Joosse here offers original readings of a range of literary authors of the early Roman empire, including Vergil, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, and Statius, and places literary texts in dialogue with contemporary epigraphic and archaeological material. Through its focus on building as a process, Building in Words furthers our understanding of the aesthetics of both architecture and literature in ancient Rome.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Making Memories: Representing Construction in Rome 2. Debating the Draining of the Fucine Lake 3. Writing Cities, Founding Texts: The City as Poetological Metaphor 4. Engineering Poetry: The Aesthetics of Construction in Statius' Silvae 5. Walls of Song: The Myth of Amphion 6. Conclusion. Construction in Reverse Epilogue. Constructing romanità: The Obelisk at the Foro Mussolini Bibliography

About the Author :
Bettina Reitz-Joosse is Associate Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the University of Groningen (Netherlands).

Review :
Building in Words remains a most worthwhile and delightful read for scholars of Latin books and monuments. Reitz-Joosse writes in a clear and engaging style, and 26 well-chosen figures buttress the largely sound argumentation. Scholars of art history as well as Latin literature will learn much from this work. In her book, Reitz-Joosse shows how much appreciation of Roman architectural achievement has been fuelled by its literary representation -- principally of the construction processes entailed. This fascinating book uncovers new ground in emphasizing the importance to Roman culture of the processes involved in the construction of monuments. Drawing on the dialogue of inscriptions and images with literary texts, Reitz-Joosse explores the memorializing strategies and metaphorical possibilities of a wide range of large-scale engineering projects. She importantly reveals that the roots of today's environmental discourse lie in political and moral controversies over imperial intervention in nature. In the scholarship on 'written Rome' there is nothing like this fine book. Reitz-Joosse expertly studies for the first time how the process of constructing architectural projects (walls, bridges, water-works, obelisks, roads, temples, statues, and cities) is represented throughout early imperial Latin literature, with productive forays, too, into later periods. The rich discussions of well-chosen test cases are informed by an understanding of representational strategies in other media and attentive to the metaliterary significance of the theme.