Farrell, Joseph
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Publication Publication Reading Latin in Schools and Colleges(1998) Farrell, JosephYears ago, when I began studying Latin, I did not intend to become a student of literature. Nevertheless, that is what happened, and my way of reading literature-any literature-is always informed by my interest and training in Latin and Greek. The same is, of course, not necessarily true either of all classicists (whose main interests may not be accurately described as "literary") or of all readers (who may not even know Latin or Greek)-and I try not to behave as if it should be! But there is no getting entirely away from the business of reading, and as both a teacher of classics and a teacher of literature, I have an enormous professional concern with how students are taught to read. In my own experience, viewed in hindsight, the apparent progression from the study of Latin and Greek as languages (which, of course, never actually concludes) to the study of Latin and Greek as literature looks so natural as to appear inevitable. It is, however, anything but, and for me or anyone involved in running an educational program at any level to assume otherwise would be a big mistake. That is a relatively simple point. A more subtle one, perhaps, is this: our professional failure to take this point seriously helps to explain some of the disjunctions that exist between high school and undergraduate classics programs, including the perplexing tendency of students with strong high school classics backgrounds not to continue these studies in their college and university careers.Publication Introduction to Augustan Poetry and the Roman Republic(2013-01-01) Farrell, Joseph; Nelis, Damien PA considerable body of recent scholarship has been devoted to investigating the ways in which societies remember, studying not only what they construct as memorable but also why and how they do so. Adopting a narrower focus, this volume examines the ways in which different aspects and images of the Roman Republic are created and exploited by the Augustan poets. Our subject immediately suggests two obvious strategies:- on the one hand, emphasis on a strictly historical project; on the other, concentration on versions of literary history. The latter has been more popular and influential in recent Latin scholarship, but the former has not been without its adherents, as the lively debate in recent historical research has fought over the value of ancient literary sources for reconstructing the early history of Rome and, crucially, for the origins of the Republic and the struggle of the orders. Simultaneously, recent work on Livy has provided strong support for a pre-Actian dating for the beginning of the composition of his history, and so has vastly improved our appreciation of the complexity and subtlety of this extraordinarily ambitious and influential historiographical project. In addition, more sophisticated readings of Roman historians in general that are themselves influenced by the application of New Critical techniques of dose reading developed by critics of poetic texts, have begun in turn to impinge on the ways in which the Latin poetry of the Augustan age is interpreted. Just as historical writers employ the materials of poetry and what we now call fiction-myth and metaphor, artful structuration, and the careful activation of intertextual possibilities involving models in both prose and verse-Augustan poets reveal their keen awareness of and interest in different historiographical modes, such as those of universal history, regal chronicles, and the tropes of annalistic writing. They are also interested in some of the characteristic themes and devices of historical writing, such as battle narrative, civil conflict, ethnography, speeches, and debates, even as they too engage intertextually with precise historiographical models in pointed and influential ways. The challenge for this volume, then, is not so much to ask whether the Augustan poets are concerned with Roman history, but to gain greater clarity with regard to the questions of how and to what end they may be seen as presenting their past as a specifically Republican history. In setting out to think about this vast topic, one which can only be treated in a highly selective manner in a book such as this, a series of obvious questions comes immediately to mind. Are there any particular aspects of the Republic that Augustan poets seem to remember with particular frequency and immediacy? Equally, are there any aspects they seem to prefer to forget? How do they shape the past in relation to the present: do they favour narratives of continuity, rupture, or repetition? What other forms of periodization do they adopt? And finally, how are we to define any given poet as 'Augustan'? Amidst such a bewildering array of questions, it seems advisable to attempt to seek some solid ground as a starting point.Publication Publication Milanion, Acontius and Gallus: Vergil, Eclogue 10.52-61(1986) Rosen, Ralph M; Farrell, JosephIn the rambling sequence of thoughts in Ecl. 10.31-69 that expresses the state of the lovesick Gallus, Vergil depicts his friend as proposing to abandoning elegy for bucolic poetry, and to take up a pair of activities resumably related to this change. These activities - carving love messages on trees and hunting - are to some extent typical of the unrequited literary, especially pastoral, lover:1Publication Review of Statius, Thebaid IX(1993) Farrell, JosephPublication Walcott's Omeros: The Classical Epic in a Postmodern World(1999) Farrell, JosephWith his plays drawn from Greek mythology and his evocative epic hymn to the Caribbean, Omeros, Nobel laureate Derek Walcott has forced many to rethink the relationships between archaic Greek society and the contemporary world. Joseph Farrell, known especially for his work on classical epic, takes up a debate as to whether Omeros can be considered an epic at all, and suggests that in forcing us even to ask this question, Walcott demands that we reassess the position and assumed supremacy of Western literary epic. In demonstrating the complex relationship of Omeros to the tradition of classical epic, Farrell reveals the contingencies of that tradition and the richness ofWalcott's poem as a work that straddles both epic and novel, classical and modern, scribal and oral.Publication Publication Eduard Fraenkel on Horace and Servius, or, Texts, Contexts, and the Field of "Latin Studies"(2005-01-01) Farrell, JosephThis essay traces the recent trajectory of the field of "Latin Studies" using the example of interpretations of Horace's Carmen saeculare and showing, in particular, the increasingly comprehensive relevance attributed to historical context. It sketches a shift away from formalist interpretation and, to an even greater degree, away from practices, such as textual criticism, that once virtually defined the field