THE ARTIST AND THE DICTATOR: ROMAN WRITERS UNDER NERO

3 points · University catalogue

This course aims at highlighting both the most important general features and the most important peculiarities of the literary masterpieces produced in the age of Nero. The basic question we will be addressing in class is what it means to be a literary artist under the rule of a despot. In order to fulfill Nero’s megalomaniac need for exaltation, cope with his absolute power and, at the same time, maintain their personal identity and ethical values as writers, Seneca, Petronius and Lucan strove to balance in their works the emperor’s expectations and their own artistic designs. These artists were not free to write what they wanted to write for present and future generations, but they tried to write it nevertheless. In this course, we will examine the extent of freedom of expression under Nero; the rhetorical techniques Neronian writers resorted to in order to express tactful modes of oblique commentary and criticism; the difficulties of the individual’s liberty in a climate of dictatorial oppression; the ways in which literature helps us discover more about the society of a given time; and, ultimately, the universal and eternal desire for artists to be themselves and express their own views in spite of mortal dangers. Such issues are all the more pertinent in the present day: in 1989, the novelist Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by the ayatollah Khomeyni after the publication of The Satanic Verses and fled to the United Kingdom; in 2011, the visual artist Ai Weiwei, whose most recent installation is currently exhibited in New York City, at Washington Square Park, served 81 days in a Chinese prison because of his artwork against dictatorial regimes. He eventually left China and settled in Berlin.No knowledge of Latin is required, as the focus of this course is literary, historical and sociological interpretation rather than linguistic competence.