Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity

ISBN-13: 9780198744764 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 448 str.

Karl Galinsky

Opis

What and how do people remember? Who controls the process of what we call cultural or social memory? What is forgotten and why? People's memories are not the same as history written in retrospect; they are malleable and an ongoing process of construction and reconstruction. Ancient Rome provided much of the cultural framework for early Christianity, and in both, the role of memory was pervasive. Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity presents perspectives from an international and interdisciplinary range of contributors on the literature, history, archaeology, and religion of a major world civilization, based on an informed engagement with important concepts and issues in memory studies. It offers a selective exploration of the wealth of topics which comprise memory studies, and also features a contribution from a leading neuroscientist on the actual workings of the human memory.

Recenzje

Similarly, perhaps the most unique and interesting feature of this book is the final essay; one does not frequently encounter neuroscientific discussions of memory, neuronal networks, and brain plasticity in books on Roman or early Christian history! Between these two bookends, Libby's discussion of memory and intertextuality, Hedrick's quadrangular model of memory, history, experience, and fantasy, Stein-Hölkeskamp's prefiguration of the collapse of the Republic in Sulla's take-over of Roman monumental memory, and Denzey Lewis' presentation of a pagan response to the Empire's Christianization stand out as especially read-worthy ... these essays provide an admirable example of the uses to which historians of antiquity are putting the amorphous field of memory studies.

O autorze

Karl Galinsky is Floyd A. Cailloux Centennial Professor of Classics and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.