Lecture: Michèle Lowrie, University of Chicago
Thursday April 17th, 12:30 PM
“Translatio imperii: A Powerful Metaphor for Reception”
Translatio is one Latin word for metaphor, so it is no surprise that the common medieval phrase for the succession of empires has a figural dimension. But what is the figure — simile, metaphor, or prefiguration — within which Rome plays a central role, either as target or source of reception? Herodotus, the book of Daniel, Sallust's Bellum Catilinae, Vergil's Aeneid, Jerome's commentary on Daniel, Otto of Freising's universal history, and Berlioz's Les Troyens list, juxtapose, and create figural relations between empires in sometimes more, sometimes less fully conceptualized ways. The difference between classical rhetoric and Christian hermeneutics is a key difference, but French Romanticism avails itself of both traditions.
Sponsored by the Humanities Institute Working Group: Metaphors of Reception, Reception as Metaphor
