Author: McCutcheon, Robert W.
Title: A Revisionist History of Cicero’s Letters
Review/Collection: "Mouseion", 13, 1
Year edition: 2016
Keywords: Histoire - Storia - History, Philologie - Filologia - Philology
Description: [Abstract dal sito della rivista] In this article, I argue that print culture has subtly influenced our understanding of the ancient editorial history of Cicero’s epistolary corpus. In particular, scholarly efforts to rediscover the original format of this corpus and to find a moment of origin for the Letters are predicated on certain preconceptions about the nature of textuality that better describe what we find in modern print culture. In contrast, I contend that if we take into account both the textual environment in the Roman world and the unique circumstances related to this corpus’s genesis, we can recognize that Cicero’s epistolary works were unlikely to have ever had a definitive original form but, rather, were a malleable and fluid textual artefact throughout their history. Finally, I suggest that such a paradigm shift in our approach to understanding Cicero’s Letters can allow for new, productive ways of reading this important source for the political and social history of the late Republic.
Works:
Author initials: McCutcheon 2016
Title: A Revisionist History of Cicero’s Letters
Review/Collection: "Mouseion", 13, 1
Year edition: 2016
Keywords: Histoire - Storia - History, Philologie - Filologia - Philology
Description: [Abstract dal sito della rivista] In this article, I argue that print culture has subtly influenced our understanding of the ancient editorial history of Cicero’s epistolary corpus. In particular, scholarly efforts to rediscover the original format of this corpus and to find a moment of origin for the Letters are predicated on certain preconceptions about the nature of textuality that better describe what we find in modern print culture. In contrast, I contend that if we take into account both the textual environment in the Roman world and the unique circumstances related to this corpus’s genesis, we can recognize that Cicero’s epistolary works were unlikely to have ever had a definitive original form but, rather, were a malleable and fluid textual artefact throughout their history. Finally, I suggest that such a paradigm shift in our approach to understanding Cicero’s Letters can allow for new, productive ways of reading this important source for the political and social history of the late Republic.
Works:
Author initials: McCutcheon 2016
