Dr. Rachel Love, Assistant Professor of Classics, Harvard
The first talk in the NYU Department of Classics’ 2024 Speaker Series. In-person attendance at NYU Department of Classics (Silver Center). See website for building access.
Abstract
Rachel Love’s paper will address the question of why Latin historiography, among a select number of other ancient genres, never develops a commentarial tradition during antiquity. Love attempts to answer this question by examining ancient historiography from two poles. The first is heteronomy vs. autonomy, and Love will explore the ways in which ancient historiography, perhaps more than other genres, is open about its commitments and debts to a larger textual tradition. The second is normativity vs. exceptionality, for which Love takes a longue durée view, examining the ways in which different generations of critics have considered historical writing as variously unique or not among other literary forms and the attendant exegetical considerations that these variations bring about.