Critical Matter Performance, Identity and Object in Greco-Roman Criticism

Critical Matter: Performance, Identity and Object in Greco-Roman Criticism How did Romans talk about literature? This question implies two others: what motivated their judgments about literary works, and how were these accounts of the literary past artistic works in their own right? Critical Matter: Performance, Identity, and Object in Greco-Roman Criticism not only answers these questions but does so by offering a new framework for understanding ancient literary criticism. Modern studies tend to paint the field of criticism as primitive and lacking in self-reflection. My book demonstrates that, on the contrary, it is a remarkably sophisticated practice, that cultural cooperation and conflict among Greek and Roman theorists were essential to its evolution, and that physical media were central to its conceptual frameworks. This project offers a new account of ancient criticism while showing that critics anticipated problems that dog modern discussions, such as the incompatibility of relative and absolute standards, presentism and antiquarianism, and formalist and historicist approaches. Critical Matter emphasizes three distinct yet interrelated aspects of Greco-Roman criticism: its artistic complexity, how cultural cooperation and conflict between Greek and Roman theorists promoted its evolution, and its reliance on visual and material culture. What emerges is a new understanding of the definition and potency of critical practice, its social and material contexts, and its lasting influence on intellectual and artistic histories. First, I argue that the values and ideas of a critic can only be uncovered by paying serious attention to the literary character of the critic’s writings. Criticism is a performative genre, and to understand the critic we must first understand his art. Second, I argue that these authors considered the effects of texts on the world and were at pains to document the interrelationship of history and the critical habit. The creation and evolution of criticism as a genre directly depends on cultural interaction between Romans and Greeks in the larger Mediterranean. The third—unifying—strand is visual culture. Material objects are central to critical practice, yet this significant register of the literary-critical idiom has yet to be studied adequately in the modern scholarship. Brief Summary of Book Contents and an Example Critical Matter contains eight chapters, covering key texts of Greek and Latin criticism from Plato through the Second Sophistic with a focus on criticism in the Roman world. Throughout these chapters I explore criticism as performance, the role of cultural interaction in its development, and the material contexts which were crucial to its analyses. A range of topics are covered: the use of statuary as a conceptual analogue for styles of language and the evolution of genres; how the cultural interaction of literary critics gave rise to new conceptions of public space and the public sphere (otium vs. negotium) in the Roman Empire; the crafting of “visual narratives” in literary history, that is, accounts of the literary past that sought to draw on physical media of storage and commemoration (the physical impression of bookrolls and inscriptional Fasti); the systematic development of visual terminology for linguistic styles; the likening of texts and language to concrete objects or animate forms such as statues and paintings, mythological creatures, or architectural features. The examples demonstrate how reception of the spoken word is inherently linked to the reception of visual media. Cicero’s Orator, for example, explores the rhythms of language which have a persuasive effect on the listener’s mind. Cicero’s stylistic guide is in fact a virtuoso performance, as he repeatedly draws attention to the pedagogical staging of his teachings. He explains the arrangement of long and short vowels but subtly and yet perceptibly employs good and bad rhythms in his lessons, in some sense explaining the music of language as it is plays in the background. In theorizing this soundscape Cicero draws not on aural but on visual explanations, citing the Platonic Forms as the model for the orator who creates powerful rhythms, just as the famous Greek sculptor Phidias “contemplated an ideal towards which he directed the art of his hands.” This audio-visual intermixing of explanation and practice was not unique to Cicero: other critics were alert to the conceptual power of a multi-sensory aesthetic. The critical tradition challenged and constructed identities by showcasing the interactions and divergences of artists who were spread across time, space, and linguistic traditions. Authors drew, for example, on the permanence of objects to posit continuities or breaks between cultures or ages. Dio Chrysostom’s famous Rhodian Oration assails the Rhodians’ reuse of dedicatory statues, while in the speech Dio reworks material from Demosthenes. The tension between the permanence and mutability of statues and texts allows Dio to reflect on Greek identity in the Roman Empire. He exploits the power of physical objects to mediate complex textual and cultural continuities. These are not isolated instances: references to physical objects and visual media are a mainstay of GrecoRoman criticism, from Horace’s dictum (ut pictura poesis) to the notionally invisible world of covert artistry (ars latet arte sua). Critical Matter will recuperate the material contexts that made these forays into criticism utterly pathbreaking in their cultural moment. Importance of the American Academy in Rome to Completion of my Book My book cuts across disciplinary boundaries to move beyond a solely textual analysis of ancient critics. It shows how critics drew on spatial contexts and physical objects to shape the critical tradition. Extended time in Rome will allow me to explore in depth the material culture that is so crucial to Critical Matter. Performance declamation and public reading (recitatio) might have taken place, for example, at the extant auditorium of Maecenas on the Esquiline (or in similar structures). Legal advocacy and public speech occupied ever more of Rome’s physical spaces, especially the imperial fora with their massive basilicas, the remains of which are a central feature of Rome’s archaeological record. The Fasti in Rome and Italy are crucial for thinking about the “visual narratives” of literary history, as when Cicero programmatically models his history of orators on Atticus’ liber annalis, “to see everything in one sweeping view, with all the orders of time laid out.” My project explores the conceptual and symbolic power of statuary in Greco-Roman criticism and would benefit greatly from first-hand viewing. To cite only a few examples: the statues of Venus in the Capitoline and the Uffizi or statues and sites for worship of Minerva in Rome. Critical Matter developed out of my second book, a study of Cicero’s Brutus (completed and now under review). That book sharpened my current focus on the importance of physical media to the critical tradition. In the Brutus Cicero likens Caesar’s writings to Praxiteles’ Cnidian Venus: “nude, upright, pleasing.” The adjective “pleasing” (venusti) is politically charged, undermining Caesar’s claims to descend from the frivolous goddess Venus. Cicero in contrast claims allegiance to Minerva, goddess of the arts and protectress of Rome. The tradition of statuary bears meanings that could not—or could not easily—have been articulated through explanation alone. I first came to understand the importance of time in Rome for evaluating these material contexts when I participated in the AAR’s 2016 Summer Epigraphy Workshop. The study of inscriptions in their physical and historical settings brought into sharpest relief the relationship between text and context: the interplay of word and object, the playfulness of authors, and the role of the audience in the construction of meaning. Being at the AAR will be invaluable for thinking about questions of physical space and performance and their material contexts: the communities it draws together—scholars, visual artists, architects, authors, and musicians—all grapple with the relationship of their craft to their public. 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