Papers by Jacqueline Fabre-Serris
Bona Dea is the last story in the collection La dame à la louve (The woman with the wolf), 1 publ... more Bona Dea is the last story in the collection La dame à la louve (The woman with the wolf), 1 published by Renée Vivien in 1904. Renée Vivien was the pseudonym of a young Englishwoman, Pauline Tarn (1877-1909), who was partly educated in France and lived permanently in Paris from 1889. She wrote in French numerous collections of poems and a collection of novels, La dame à la louve. The stories of this collection are attributed to male and female narrators, from different cultures, depicted as having lived in different times, mostly in the modern age, some of them in the distant past. Vivien often set her fictions in ancient Greece. Bona Dea is the only one set in Rome. Bona Dea is a Roman goddess worshipped only by women. Little is known about her cult, one of the oldest in Rome. The goddess is not often referred to by ancient poets, but some particularities of her cult are reported by Servius, Macrobius and Plutarch. When I started working on the Bona Dea of Vivien, I assumed that Vivien had read a contemporary literary text on the Roman goddess, and I was looking for a poet or a novelist in her literary milieu or among the writers belonging to the so-called decadent movement. In vain. Actually, Vivien's main source appears to have been a scholarly book, the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, published by the eminent English classicist and lexicographer William Smith, in 1849. Later, trying to clarify the origin of the proper names present in the novel, I came to the conclusion that Vivien had probably used other contemporary scholarly sources. On balance, it is not so surprising that she was interested in classical antiquity -not as a dilettante, but in a more serious way -and that she was familiar with some recent publications, including those of classical philologists. Her friend Pierre Louÿs enjoyed competing with some of them when he wrote his Songs of Bilitis (1894) and claimed that his book was a translation from ancient Greek. We know that Vivien herself learned Greek 'to read Homer in the [Greek] text' as she said, in 1898, with a private teacher, Gaetan Baron, who trained her rigorously, using the most-up-date methods and the best reference books (Fabre-Serris 2016: 93-5). In 1903, Vivien published Sapho, traduction nouvelle avec le texte grec (Sapho, a new translation with the Greek text), from the edition of Henry Thornton Wharton, that her lover, Natalie Barney, had procured for her. Printed in 1885 in London, this English edition was based on the German edition of Theodor Bergk (Leipzig, 1880). In 1904, as the same time as La Dame à la louve, Vivien also published a translation of
In his Lezioni americane, conceived as "memos for the next millennium", Italo Calvino quotes 'lig... more In his Lezioni americane, conceived as "memos for the next millennium", Italo Calvino quotes 'lightness' among the five values, qualities and specificities that he proposes for the literature of the future. As examples of ancient authors practicing a form of lightness, he mentions Lucretius and Ovid, referring to Lucretius' physical conception of the word and to some mythological narratives in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In both cases, he stresses the fact that lightness is "a way of looking at the world based on philosophy and science: the doctrines of Epicurus for Lucretius and those of Pythagoras for Ovid", but also that lightness is "something arising from the writing itself, from the poet's own linguistic power".1 Ovid has long been considered 'a light poet' and often faulted by comparison with Virgil, who is praised for his 'depth'. Calvino clearly supports the opposite view, praising Ovid for his choice of lightness. In this paper, I would like to follow up on his remarks and examine, as a specialist of Latin poetry, Ovid's way of thinking about the leuitas of Love by comparing him to Horace whose philosophical and ideological positions are different, inasmuch as Horace refers to Lucretius, and Ovid, not to Pythagoras (as Calvino believed), but to Empedocles. In Rome, grauitas is a concept highly valued socially, politically and morally. However, as a result of Roman engagement with Hellenistic culture, lightness emerged as a positive value in arts and literature. As brilliantly argued by Gilles Sauron,2 lightness was, for example, a major motif in Neo-attic production. At the end of the Roman Republic, in the aesthetic field, lightness was indeed favoured by some of Caesar's supporters, who were hoping for a radical political change (res nouae). These Romans used decorative art to promote the image of a moving world characterized by lightness, as a means of alluding to the 'cosmos at the origins' , still in gestation, where the different species (humans, animals, plants) were intermingled and the movements of living beings not
In this paper I argue that Epode 11, as an elegiac parody, can be seen as an iambic variation bas... more In this paper I argue that Epode 11, as an elegiac parody, can be seen as an iambic variation based on the same way of contrasting the elegiac genre with another genre capable to provide remedies for love than the one used by Vergil in Eclogue 10. Following Harrison, I will analyze Epode 11 as an example of "generic enrichment" resulting from the way Horace combined elegiac and iambic elements in order to create a generically mixed poem.
The Cult of Bona Dea was celebrated in Rome twice during the year, on May in a sanctuary locate... more The Cult of Bona Dea was celebrated in Rome twice during the year, on May in a sanctuary located at the foot of the Aventine Hill, and during the night of - December in the house of a magistrate cum imperio. During the first century , the worship of the goddess became entangled with two political events. While Cicero was dealing with the Catilinarian conspiracy, the cult of Bona Dea was performed in his house. An incident occurred, which the Vestals interpreted as 'a sign' sent out by the goddess to the consul. When the fire on the altar looked dormant, 'a high and brilliant flame' suddenly arose. The Vestals saw in it an omen of 'salvation and glory' and ordered Terentia 'to tell her husband to do what he had decided in the interest of the fatherland' (Plut. Cic. .). The cult of Bona Dea was celebrated pro populo: 'for the people' (Cic. Leg. .). It is therefore no wonder that the Vestals gave the incident a political reading. Their interpretation was perfectly timed, as Cicero was faced with a tough decision. Men were prohibited from attending the festival of the goddess. But in , the intrusion of the Roman politician Publius Clodius Pulcher into the house of Caesar, where the ceremony was being celebrated, nearly caused a political scandal. Clodius broke into the house dressed as a woman, apparently with the intention of joining Pompeia, the wife of Caesar. The latter immediately repudiated his spouse. Clodius was prosecuted but finally acquitted despite the attacks and speech of Cicero. Ovid provides another piece of evidence for the importance of the cult of Bona Dea around the same period. In the Fasti he recalls that the sanctuary of the goddess on the Aventine Hill was restored by Livia. He underlines that, in so doing, the wife of Augustus was following the example of her husband (.-): ne non imitata maritum | esset, et est omni parte secuta uirum ('in order to imitate her husband, and she followed But this decision cost him a year in exile.
Jacqueline Fabre-Serris, 2024
Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 16 décembre 2024. Le texte seul est utilisable sous l... more Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 16 décembre 2024. Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Press, 2009, pp. 99, 145: «most obvious is the modelling on Empedoclean Neikos of Discordia, the ... more Press, 2009, pp. 99, 145: «most obvious is the modelling on Empedoclean Neikos of Discordia, the demon who hurls Rome into the chaos of war with Carthage in Book 7 of the Annales». Comme il l'a préalablement rappelé (p. 99), «the most famous Empedoclean
Jacque
Les mythes de la fabrication de l'humain ont particulièrement intéressé Ovide: on trouve dans les... more Les mythes de la fabrication de l'humain ont particulièrement intéressé Ovide: on trouve dans les Métamorphoses huit récits qui racontent la création soit d'une race, soit d'un groupe d'hommes, soit d'un individu. Chacun d'eux est conçu de façon à répondre à trois questions que le lecteur peut spontanément se poser: Qui en est l'auteur? Comment a-t-il procédé? Quel était le but recherche? L'analyse de la narration et plus particulièrement de son contexte montre que s'ajoute, chaque fois, une autre interrogation plus fondamentale: la fabrication de l'humain relève-t-elle de la transgression?
Jacqueline Fabre-Serris, "How to Read Hyginus' Fabulae? Theories and Practices", in Labor Imperfectus. Unfinished, Incomplete, Partial Texts in Classical Antiquity, ed. by J. Fabre-Serris, M. Formisano and S. Frangoulidis, De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2023, 289-309 The Fabulae of Hyginus results from the editing work of a Renaissance scholar, Micyllus, in 1535,... more The Fabulae of Hyginus results from the editing work of a Renaissance scholar, Micyllus, in 1535, based on a single damaged manuscript, in which an "original text" was/is impossible to identify due to successive interpolations and deletions. Two approaches can be applied to this "unfinished text", depending on the answers given to two questions: What is a mythographer? What is the mythographer's project? The first approach is based on the idea that the mythographer is a compiler who intended to provide a variety of information, deemed useful for a better knowledge of mythology in general. The second approach is based on the idea that "the first author" wrote his text as poets do, that is, by selecting mythological elements from the tradition, organizing them and creating individual versions of the myths. I support this second approach by giving as an example a detailed analysis of Fabulae 66-75 focused on the Theban myth.
Suicides for Love, Phyllis, Pyramus and Thisbe. Critical Variations on a Famous Motif of Erotic Poetry, in J. Farrell, J. Miller, N. Nelis and A. Schiesaro (eds), Ovid, Death a,d Transfiguration, 2023, 90-107
Fabre-Serris Jacqueline, 2022
Pour conforter son interprétation de l'Énéide, Fulgence a eu l'idée ingénieuse de l'attribuer à s... more Pour conforter son interprétation de l'Énéide, Fulgence a eu l'idée ingénieuse de l'attribuer à son auteur, Virgile, qu'il introduit ainsi (85) : Nam ecce ad me etiam ipse Ascrei fontis bractamento saturior aduenit, quales uatum imagines esse solent, dum adsumptis ad opus conficiendum tabulis stupida fronte arcanum quiddam latranti intrinsecus tractatu submurmurant. « Le voici en effet qui vient à moi en personne, tout rassasié du liquide de la source d'Ascra, tel que les portraits représentent traditionnellement les poètes, quand, les tablettes à portée de main pour composer une oeuvre, et l'air frappé de stupeur, ils murmurent quelque propos mystérieux où résonne un aboiement 1. » La fin de la phrase est une allusion au vers 107 de la Bucolique 8, que Fulgence cite un peu avant ce passage, au moment où il commente la continentia (« la substance ») de cette églogue (84) : In parte uero extrema tetigit eufemesin, quam etiam in nona egloga prosecutus est, in octaua quidem ubi dicit : 'Aspice, corripuit tremulis altaria flammis sponte sua, dum ferre moror, cinis ipse. Bonum sit. Nescio quid certum est et Hilas in limine latrat.' « Dans la dernière partie de cette églogue (la huitième), il a traité des présages-sujet qu'il a poursuivi aussi dans la neuvième-, quand il dit : 'Regarde, tandis que je tarde à l'enlever, cette cendre a d'elle-même entouré l'autel de flammes tremblotantes. Qu'heureux soit le présage ! Mais il y a quelque chose, c'est sûr ; je ne sais quoi ; et Hylas aboie sur le seuil.' » Il n'est pas étonnant, puisqu'il fait de Virgile son propre commentateur, que Fulgence ait imaginé cette autoréférence à un passage susceptible d'être interprété allégoriquement : l'aboiement-signe d'une présence-étant pris comme l'indice d'un 'autre' sens à décrypter. C'est une des tâches du commentateur 1 J'ai utilisé l'édition (texte et traduction) de WolFF (2009).
Elegy 3.11 of the Corpus Tibullianum is written in the first person. Is the author a woman, or a ... more Elegy 3.11 of the Corpus Tibullianum is written in the first person. Is the author a woman, or a man pretending to be a woman? Both hypotheses were supported. The first was put forward in 1755 by Heyne, who attributed elegies 3.9 and 3.11 to a Sulpicia living in the Augustan age. In 1838, Gruppe attributed poems 8-13 to an unknown poet and epigrams 14-18 to Sulpicia, Messalla's niece. This second assumption was accepted until the late twentieth century. Insofar as it was based on the ideas of his time about the kind of texts a woman was able to write, Gruppe did not have to strongly argue for his attribution, which was only contested in the following years about epigram 13. It is more surprising that this attribution continued to be accepted in the twentieth century and beyond, even after gender conceptions have changed significantly. This is particularly the case since, in 1994, Holt Parker argued that all eight poems in the first person were by Sulpicia by putting forward a whole series of arguments based on, among other ideas, the use of the first person (there is no example in Antiquity of a poet pretending to be someone else by using the 'I'). In this paper I will also support the assumption that the author of elegy 3.11 is Sulpicia by using two methods of modern text analysis: intertextuality and intratextuality, with the aim of showing how Sulpicia constructs herself as an elegiac author whose work is both original and 'feminine'.
Non magistratus nec sacerdotia nec triumphi nec insignia nec dona aut spolia bellica iis continge... more Non magistratus nec sacerdotia nec triumphi nec insignia nec dona aut spolia bellica iis contingere possunt; munditiae et ornatus et cultus, haec feminarum insignia sunt, his gaudent et gloriantur, hunc mundum muliebrem appellarunt maiores nostri. Les magistratures, les sacerdoces, les triomphes, les distinctions honorifiques, les récompenses, les dépouilles de guerre, elles ne peuvent y avoir accès : lélégance, les ornements, les raffinements de la culture, voici ce par quoi les femmes se distinguent ; cest ce dont elles se réjouissent et se glorifient ; cest ce que nos ancêtres ont appelé la toilette des femmes. 1 (Liv. 34,7
Before the Tristia, the first poems written in exile, Ovid mentions his wife only once, indirectl... more Before the Tristia, the first poems written in exile, Ovid mentions his wife only once, indirectly in Amores 3.13, when he relates a shared trip to Veii. He gives the following reason for this trip: as his wife was born in the Faliscan town, they came to 'the walls defeated' by Camillus (1-2). Ovid assisted in the festival in honour of Juno, which he then describes without mentioning his wife. In the Tristia and the Epistulae ex Ponto, his wife is a relatively frequent addressee of his poems 1 and the only woman to whom he writes, with the exception of a protégée, Perilla, to whom he was a mentor and tutor in poetry (Tr. 3.7). This is a very unusual situation for an elegiac poet who until then had only celebrated his puella and illicit love affairs. It is also unusual because Ovid's relationship with his wife has been affected by his exile: he expects that she protects his property and helps him to obtain his return to Italy. The elegists stage themselves and their puellae in fictitious situations, repeated from one poet to the next. First, my chapter will examine how Ovid has reused some of these situations by adapting to marital relationships certain behaviours and feelings associated with love affairs. Which selections and which changes has he made? What may we conclude about the feelings between the two spouses? In the second part, I will seek to clarify what is really at the root of their relationship. Ovid praises his wife for having all the virtues of a good wife, and he expects that she shows them in her behaviour towards him. However, progressively during his exile, he is increasingly expressing his disappointment. I will analyse how Ovid uses the notion of fama ('reputation'), his wife's and his own, in particular, to try to gain this more effective assistance he considers to be his due. I will end on the final attempt that Ovid makes in Epistulae ex Ponto 3.1, where he tries to change the too static model of the 'good spouse', by suggesting to his wife that she should adopt a more active behaviour in the political arena, of which Livia is all at once the target, the guarantor, and the implicit example. Adaptions and inadequacies of the elegiac model Ovid stages his relationship with his wife by reusing some situations borrowed from the elegiac genre. Several times before, in the Heroides and BK-TandF-CHALLET_9780367345044-211166-Chp05.indd 76
Quand Ovide entreprend de raconter des mythes grecs et romains en se situant dans une perspective... more Quand Ovide entreprend de raconter des mythes grecs et romains en se situant dans une perspective chronologique, il ne s'aventure pas sur un terrain vierge. Il s'insère dans une tradition de transmission des mythes qui a été l'objet de questionnements divers, comme cela a été le cas pour l'ensemble des pratiques culturelles, lors de la crise institutionnelle et des bouleversements économiques, sociaux et idéologiques déclenchés par les conquêtes au 1 ier siècle av. J.-C. L'un des membres de l'élite sociale qui a le plus oeuvré alors pour sauver la culture romaine est Varron, qui nous a laissé un témoignage précieux non seulement parce qu'il s'agit d'un regard porté de l'intérieur, mais parce qu'il atteste l'existence d'une réflexion critique sur les discours tenus à propos des dieux, discours qui incluent ou ont pour objet les mythes. Certes il s'agit d'une théorie d'origine grecque, mais que lui-même a, pour une partie, adaptée à la culture romaine. Comme on le voit d'abord au vocabulaire choisi. Augustin (notre source en l'occurrence), qui associe aux trois types de traditions sur les dieux des adjectifs grecs: mythicen, physicen, politicen (C.D. 6.12, 1; "mythique, physique et politique"), propose, dans un passage précédent de La Cité de Dieu, pour les deux premières des transcriptions latines qui sont de son cru: fabulare ou fabulosum pour la théologie transmise par les poètes; naturale pour celle transmise par les philosophes. Il indique que Varron a donné un nom latin à la troisième: tertium etiam ipse latine enuntiauit, quod ciuile appellatur (6.5, 1) 1. Il en a aussi, toujours au témoignage d'Augustin, pensé ou repensé le contenu. La théologie civile, due aux premiers personnages de la cité, serait issue, pour Varron, "d'une combinaison" de la théologie des
Jacqueline Fabre-Serris, "Identities and Ethnicities in the Punic Wars: Livy's Portrait of the Carthaginian Sophonisba", in Identities, Ethnicities and Gender in Antiquity, ed. by Jacquelie Fabre-Serris, Alison Keith and Florence Klein, De Gruyter, Berlin, Boston, 2021, 93-111 There are many situations during war (fighting, embassies, and alliances) where ethnic groups bec... more There are many situations during war (fighting, embassies, and alliances) where ethnic groups become aware of their differences in behavior, ethical values, and beliefs. As a result, they usually emphasize these differences by highlighting their own (real or constructed) characteristic features and arguing that these features played a major role in the successful outcome of the conflicts. The Romans built up a vast empire, in which most of the defeated peoples had been integrated. The question of what had constituted, and did constitute, Roman identity was acute and particularly complex, not only during these successive wars, but afterwards, when the ancient historians sought to retrace the great steps of the Empire by analyzing the various impacts of its conquests on the specificity and evolution of Roman culture. As Feeney has observed, 'What counts as Roman culture is continually being reinvented and redefined as a result of the mutual interaction between the Romans and other peoples with whom they progressively come into contact'. 1 As scholars have noted, Livy is always seeking to highlight 'Roman' moral values and behaviors, by promoting them as having significantly contributed to the glorious story of Rome. The superiority of the Roman cultural model, based on, among other virtues, the practice of bravery, justice, loyalty and self-control, 2 is thus vaunted as explaining the defeat and justifying the assimilation of the conquered peoples. 3 This perspective is particularly noticeable in Livy's many narratives on the Punic wars. This was the longest and most dangerous period of war for Rome, but also the last one praised by the Augustan writers as illustrating the good practice of mores defined as typically Roman. 4 The following wars, conversely, were seen as having paved the way to foreign ways of living, thinking, and behaving, whose influence was deemed negatively decisive on the evolution and crisis of the Roman cultural model. 1 Feeney 2016, 93. 2 See Moore 1989. 3 As recalled by Levene (2010, 214), Livy was native of Padua, a city of Cisalpine Gaul that was not fully enfranchised and incorporated into Italy at the time of his birth. 4 According to Walsh (1996, 189-90), Livy believes that the hidden seeds of moral decline began to be sown in 187 upon the return of Manlius Volso with his army from Asia.
This paper focuses on a special type of ingenious expression used by Ovid in the Metamorphoses: t... more This paper focuses on a special type of ingenious expression used by Ovid in the Metamorphoses: the ambigua uerba. I examine under what circumstances Ovid attributes ambiguous replies referring to erotic desires and erotic feelings to certain characters. I argue that ambiguity is a linguistic device employed by Ovid to give more complexity to his psychological analysis of love and, more precisely, to explore, in a very subtle way, how difficult human relations are to grasp and understand, even for those concerned. All of these replies constitute an indirect hint of a hidden desire that cannot be clearly expressed or, what is even more interesting, perceived as such by the speaker himself. According to Seneca the Elder, Ovid was a brilliant student of the rhetorician Arellius Fuscus (Contr. 2.2.8). He was taught to extend narrative scenarios from a briefly summarized plot and trained to find, in the controuersiae, various arguments to support, in succession, both parties involved in a trial and, in the suasoriae, to deliberate, by impersonating mythological or historical charac-ter(s), before taking a particular decision at a crucial moment. Seneca states that Ovid preferred to deal with the suasoriae rather than with the controuersiae, unless the latter were ethicae, i.e., focused on ethical issues, treated from a psychological perspective (Contr. 2.2.12). Seneca here provides some very interesting information since he allows us to view Ovid's narrative practice in the Metamorphoses from the perspective of these rhetorical exercises. Taking as his starting point the summaries of mythological stories found in such mythographers as Parthenius of Nicaea, Ovid applied to these plots various techniques and skills learned in the schools of rhetoric in order to expand them into long narratives. In these accounts he describes in detail the feelings, thoughts and actions of the main characters by adopting a psychological point of view. He displays great skill in offering insightful observations
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Papers by Jacqueline Fabre-Serris