Author: Stutz, Kathryn H.
Title: Law & Orator: Depicting Cicero through Modern Mystery Fiction
Review/Collection: In : Berno, Francesca Romana & La Bua, Giuseppe [Edd.], Portraying Cicero in Literature, Culture, and Politics. From Ancient to Modern Times, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2022, 483 p. [Berno & La Bua 2022]
Place edition: Berlin
Editor: De Gruyter
Year edition: 2022
Pages: 211-232
Keywords: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy
Description: Kathryn H. Stutz gets away from politics to confront contemporary narrative and tv series, showing another, captivating aspect of Cicero’s afterlife. In the form of mystery stories, many modern fictions cast Cicero as a heroic all-in-one lawyer-detective, or at least as the patron to some lesser-known sleuth. This contribution argues that the mystery tropes appearing in modern receptions of Cicero show a preoccupation with the question of Cicero’s morality. Whether Cicero is portrayed as the morally corrupt defender of a guilty client, or as the brilliant Sherlockian detective searching for the truth amidst the chaos of late Republican Rome, the fusion of detective tropes with popular portrayals of Cicero reveals a tension between Cicero’s own competitive and persuasive priorities and our modern valorization of truth and virtue in our legal ‘heroes’. [Berno & La Bua 2022, xvii]
Link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110748703-013/pdf
Author initials: Stutz 2022
Title: Law & Orator: Depicting Cicero through Modern Mystery Fiction
Review/Collection: In : Berno, Francesca Romana & La Bua, Giuseppe [Edd.], Portraying Cicero in Literature, Culture, and Politics. From Ancient to Modern Times, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2022, 483 p. [Berno & La Bua 2022]
Place edition: Berlin
Editor: De Gruyter
Year edition: 2022
Pages: 211-232
Keywords: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy
Description: Kathryn H. Stutz gets away from politics to confront contemporary narrative and tv series, showing another, captivating aspect of Cicero’s afterlife. In the form of mystery stories, many modern fictions cast Cicero as a heroic all-in-one lawyer-detective, or at least as the patron to some lesser-known sleuth. This contribution argues that the mystery tropes appearing in modern receptions of Cicero show a preoccupation with the question of Cicero’s morality. Whether Cicero is portrayed as the morally corrupt defender of a guilty client, or as the brilliant Sherlockian detective searching for the truth amidst the chaos of late Republican Rome, the fusion of detective tropes with popular portrayals of Cicero reveals a tension between Cicero’s own competitive and persuasive priorities and our modern valorization of truth and virtue in our legal ‘heroes’. [Berno & La Bua 2022, xvii]
Link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110748703-013/pdf
Author initials: Stutz 2022
