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When Nero took the stage, the audience played along - or else. The drama thus enacted, whether in the theater proper or in the political arena, unfolds in all its rich complexity in Actors in the Audience. This is a book about language, theatricality, and empire - about how the Roman emperor dramatized his rule and how his subordinates in turn staged their response.
The focus is on Nero: his performances onstage spurred his contemporaries to reflect on the nature of power and representation, and to make the stage a paradigm for larger questions about the theatricality of power. Through these portrayals by ancient writers, Shadi Bartsch explores what happens to language and representation when all discourse is distorted by the pull of an autocratic authority.
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Some Roman senators, forced to become actors and dissimulators under the scrutinizing eye of the ruler, portrayed themselves and their class as the victims of regimes that are, for us, redolent of Stalinism. Other writers claimed that doublespeak - saying one thing and meaning two - was the way one could, and did, undo the constraining effects of imperial oppression.
Tacitus, Suetonius, and Juvenal all figure in Bartsch's shrewd analysis of historical and literary responses to the brute facts of empire; even the Panegyricus of Pliny the Younger now appears as a reaction against the widespread awareness of dissimulation.
Informed by theories of dramaturgy, sociology, new historicism, and cultural criticism, this close reading of literary and historical texts gives us a new perspective on the politics of the Roman empire - and on the languages and representation of power.
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Subjects
Ancient Rhetoric, Communication, Dictators in literature, Emperors in literature, Historiography, History, History and criticism, Latin literature, Literature and history, Rhetoric, Ancient, Role playing in literature, Theater, Theater audiences, Latin literature, history and criticism, Rome, historiography, Emperors, In literature, Literary criticism - general & miscellaneous, Ancient roman literature - literary criticism, Politics & literature, Ancient theater - history & criticism, Communications - general & miscellaneous, Rhetoric, General & miscellaneous italian history, AncientPlaces
RomeTimes
Empire, 30 B.C.-284 A.D., To 500Showing 2 featured editions. View all 2 editions?
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1
Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian (Revealing Antiquity)
July 22, 1998, Harvard University Press
Hardcover
in English
0674003578 9780674003576
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2
Actors in the audience: theatricality and doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian
1994, Harvard University Press
in English
0674003578 9780674003576
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WorldCat
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- Created April 29, 2008
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August 6, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 24, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Fixed duplicate goodreads IDs. |
April 16, 2010 | Edited by bgimpertBot | Added goodreads ID. |
April 14, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the edition. |
April 29, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |