Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789-1945

Front Cover
Catharine Edwards
Cambridge University Press, Mar 4, 1999 - History - 279 pages
This collection of essays explores aspects of the reception of ancient Rome in a number of European countries from the late 18th century to the end of the Second World War. Rome has been made to stand for literary authority, republican heroism, imperial power and decline, the Catholic church, the pleasure of ruins. The studies offered here examine some of the sometimes strange and unexpected places where Roman presences have manifested themselves during this period. Scholars from several disciplines, including English literature and history of art, as well as classics, bring to bear a variety of approaches on a wide range of images and texts, from statues of Napoleon to Freud's analysis of dreams. Rome's seemingly boundless capacity for multiple, indeed conflicting, signification has made it an extraordinarily fertile paradigm for making sense of--and also for destabilising--history, politics, identity, memory and desire.

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Contents

Rome history and empire revisited
19
Granet and Gibbon in dialogue
35
a new Augustus? 53
53
Translating empire? Macaulays Rome 70
70
Comparativism and references to Rome in British imperial
88
Decadence and the subversion of empire
110
memory ghosts moonlight and weeds
125
Henry James and the anxiety of Rome
140
Christians and pagans in Victorian novels
173
Screening ancient Rome in the new Italy
188
Fascism and the cult of romanità
205
The Nazi concept of Rome
221
T S Eliot and the presence of the past
236
Bibliography
256
Index
275
Copyright

Simeon
157

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