Abstract
This paper explores the contributions of imagery, temporal ambiguity, and intertextuality in creating fictionalising colour in Cicero’s Ad Familiares. An opening study of ‘epistolary’ fictionality in Ovid’s Tristia 4.2 lays groundwork for subsequent discussions of fictionalising scenarios in Cicero’s Ad Fam. 7.1 and Ad Fam. 9.2, of Caelius’s theatrical imagery in his persona as Cicero’s political ‘futurologist’in Book 8, and finally of the ancient editor’s use of thematic sequences that extend across whole books to amplify the fictionalizing qualities of individual letters. The outcome of the creative manipulations of perceived reality in Cicero’s letters is an ambiguous, potentially fictionalizing (but not necessarily fictional) space for epistolographical communication. In that space, life itself is represented as a staged performance, in which the most ‘fictional’ material paradoxically expresses the ‘real’ world of the writer himself.
Keywords: intertextuality, temporality, spectacle, theatricality, humour
Keywords: intertextuality, temporality, spectacle, theatricality, humour
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | 'Res vera, res ficta' |
| Subtitle of host publication | Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography |
| Editors | Janja Soldo, Claire Jackson |
| Place of Publication | Berlin/Boston |
| Publisher | de Gruyter, Walter GmbH & Co |
| Pages | 181-205 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9783111308494 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9783111306995 |
| Publication status | Published - 18 Sept 2023 |
Publication series
| Name | Trends in Classics |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter |
| Volume | 149 |