Unity and Design in Horace's Odes

By Matthew S. Santirocco

261 pp., 6.125 x 9.25

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-5993-3
    Published: February 2009
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-2027-5
    Published: January 2015
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-6661-5
    Published: January 2015

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Horace's first three books of Odes, published together in 23 B.C., are a masterpiece of Augustan literature and the culmination of classical lyric. Matthew Santirocco provides the first new critical approach to them in English in more than two decades.

Drawing on recent works on ancient and modern poetry books and using several contemporary critical methodologies, Santirocco reveals the Odes both as individual poems and as components in a larger poetic design. His reading of Horace demonstrates that the ensemble is itself an important context for understanding and appreciating the poetry.

Reconstructing the history of the ancient poetry book, both Greek and Roman, Santirocco challenges certain common assumptions about its origin and development. He argues that true parallels for the Odes are not to be found in the other Augustan books, which are relatively homogeneous in content and form, but in the heterogeneous collections of Hellenistic writers.

Odes I-III comprise eighty-eight poems in twelve different meters, and in tone and topic they vary widely. Avoiding the two extremes of past scholarship, which either has searched for a single underlying unity or else has denied any meaningful design, Santirocco uncovers a variety of both static and dynamic structures and shows their relevance to the literary interpretation of the poems at all levels. Ultimately, the composition of a poem and the disposition of the group are shown to be analogous activities. Odes I-III do not constitute a medley of discrete poems but, instead, approximate the unity of a single ode.

About the Author

Matthew S. Santirocco is Seryl Kushner Dean of the College of Arts and Science, Professor of Classics, Angelo J. Ranieri Director of Ancient Studies, and Associate Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs at New York University.
For more information about Matthew S. Santirocco, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"A brilliant exposition of the dynamic principles of design that control the order of Horace's Odes. Probing patterns of arrangement with enormous sensitivity, Santirocco demonstrates the importance of contextuality for elucidating the quality, and deepening the force, of these extraordinary poems."--Michael C. J. Putnam, Brown University

"A lucid and sophisticated reading of Odes I-III as a collection."--Kenneth J. Reckford

"Santirocco has shown that the connections between the poems are not only ingenious but are important for an understanding of the poems and even the poetry itself." --M. Owen Lee, University of Toronto