Complex Inferiorities

This volume investigates an important and surprisingly widespread phenomenon in Latin literature which has to date received little sustained discussion: the deliberate assumption of a weaker voice by speakers who in fact hold sufficient status not to be forced into this position. Though often associated with the markers of imperial hegemony and elite speech Latin literature evinces a remarkably broad range of strategies designed to enable the adoption of a markedly disempowered voice- from topoi such as <em>recusatio</em> (professing a lack of ability to write in status-conforming superior genres) and rhetorical devices such as <em>prosopopoeia</em> (artfully and strategically adopting a persona to garner favour even when this means temporarily forfeiting one's higher status and discursive privileges) to the long-silenced female heroines of Ovid's <em>Heroides</em> and satire's irreverent take on the great and the good by framing its narratives as being articulated 'from below'. Even large-scale cultural self-positionings fall within this scope be they expressions of Roman cultural inferiority vis-�-vis classical Greece or the tensions that arise between humble (yet spiritually superior) Christian writers and their grand canonical and classical (yet pagan) predecessors. <p/>The intersecting case studies offered in <em>Complex Inferiorities</em> examine this phenomenon in a wide range of genres periods and authors. By demonstrating that re-negotiating alleged weakness constitutes a central activity in Latin literature this volume reveals the extent of the literary and cultural-political possibilities opened up by assuming and speaking in voices of weakness and inferiority. Authored by experts in their fields the individual chapters explore the crucial role of the 'weaker voice' in establishing perpetuating and challenging hierarchies and values in a wide range of contexts- from poetics and choices of genre to social status and intra- and intercultural relations- thereby offering invaluable insights not only for the study of classics but for literary and cultural studies across the humanities.<br>