@book{OPUS4-63165, title = {Tacitus' Wonders}, editor = {McNamara, James and Pag{\´a}n, Victoria Emma}, publisher = {Bloomsbury}, address = {London}, isbn = {978-1-350-24172-5}, doi = {10.5040/9781350241763}, pages = {viii, 281}, year = {2022}, abstract = {This volume approaches the broad topic of wonder in the works of Tacitus, encompassing paradox, the marvellous and the admirable. Recent scholarship on these themes in Roman literature has tended to focus on poetic genres, with comparatively little attention paid to historiography: Tacitus, whose own judgments on what is worthy of note have often differed in interesting ways from the preoccupations of his readers, is a fascinating focal point for this complementary perspective. Scholarship on Tacitus has to date remained largely marked by a divide between the search for veracity - as validated by modern historiographical standards - and literary approaches, and as a result wonders have either been ignored as unfit for an account of history or have been deprived of their force by being interpreted as valid only within the text. While the modern ideal of historiographical objectivity tends to result in striving for consistent heuristic and methodological frameworks, works as varied as Tacitus' Histories, Annals and opera minora can hardly be prefaced with a statement of methodology broad enough to escape misrepresenting their diversity. In our age of specialization a streamlined methodological framework is a virtue, but it should not be assumed that Tacitus had similar priorities, and indeed the Histories and Annals deserve to be approached with openness towards the variety of perspectives that a tradition as rich as Latin historiographical prose can include within its scope. This collection proposes ways to reconcile the divide between history and historiography by exploring contestable moments in the text that challenge readers to judge and interpret for themselves, with individual chapters drawing on a range of interpretive approaches that mirror the wealth of authorial and reader-specific responses in play.}, language = {en} } @article{McNamara2021, author = {McNamara, James}, title = {Pliny, Tacitus and the Monuments of Pallas}, series = {The classical quarterly}, volume = {71}, journal = {The classical quarterly}, number = {1}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {0009-8388}, doi = {10.1017/S0009838821000203}, pages = {308 -- 329}, year = {2021}, abstract = {This article is a discussion of Plin. Ep. 7.29 and Ep. 8.6, in which he presents his reaction to seeing the grave monument of Marcus Antonius Pallas, the freedman and minister of the Emperor Claudius, beside the Via Tiburtina. The monument records a senatorial vote of thanks to Pallas, and Pliny expresses intense indignation at the Senate's subservience and at the power and influence wielded by a freedman. This article compares Pliny's letters with Tacitus' account of the senatorial vote of thanks to Pallas at Ann. 12.52-3 and explores the differences between the ways in which the two authors encourage readers to relate to past events. It is noted that the Pallas letters are unusual amongst Pliny's let- ters for their treatment of material unconnected with the life and career of Pliny and his friends, and argued that in Ep. 7.29 Pliny uses language and attitudes drawn from satire to evoke the past. Ep. 8.6 is read as an idiosyncratic piece of historical enquiry, consider- ing Pliny's use of citation and his anonymization of historical individuals. Both letters are considered in the context of the surrounding letters, and a hypothesis is offered regarding the identity of their addressee Montanus, considering evidence from Tacitus' Histories and Annals. Discussion of Tac. Ann. 12.52-3 focusses on the use of irony. Pliny's evocation of enargeia ('vividness') is compared with that of Tacitus. The article concludes with comparison of the historical accounts offered by Pliny and Tacitus through reflection on Juvenal, Satire 1.}, language = {en} } @article{McNamara2021, author = {McNamara, James}, title = {Lost in Germania}, series = {Unspoken Rome: Absences in Latin Texts}, journal = {Unspoken Rome: Absences in Latin Texts}, editor = {Geue, Tom and Giusti, Elena}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, address = {Cambridge}, isbn = {978-11-0884-304-1}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108913843.012}, pages = {201 -- 218}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Tacitus' Germania is notable for its absences: lacking a preface and programmatic statements, and being the only ethnographic monograph to have survived from Greco-Roman antiquity, readers have often leapt to fill in its perceived blanks. This chapter aims at redressing the effects of overdetermined readings by interpreting the text's absences as significant in their own right.}, language = {en} } @article{Miller2014, author = {Miller, Nicholas}, title = {Spaces of thought: transnational history, intellectual history and the enlightenment}, series = {Ayer : revista de historia contempor{\´a}nea}, journal = {Ayer : revista de historia contempor{\´a}nea}, number = {94}, publisher = {Asociaci{\´o}n de Historia Contempor{\´a}nea}, address = {Madrid}, issn = {1134-2277}, pages = {97 -- 120}, year = {2014}, abstract = {This article offers a theoretical overview of transnational history in relation to the history of ideas, a field that certain specialists of transnational history have singled out as a promising field of future transnational research. Recent historiographical discussions within Enlightenment studies are offered to throw light about the actual novelty that a transnational perspective would offer for the history of ideas. Rather than being an entirely new outlook, transnational types of analysis can be understood as lying at the heart of classical, universalistic Enlightened scholarship, a perspective that was challenged according to the fundamental problem of context.}, language = {es} }