Declamation, Paternity, and Roman Identity: Authority and the Rhetorical Self

by Erik Gunderson

Declamation was a staple of education and cultured literary life in the Roman world over many centuries. This book offers a radical re-evaluation of the genre, its social importance, and its role in the history of the Western self. Ironically, this genre obsessed with "growing up" has been rejected by its own posterity. Erik Gunderson explores the social and psychic dynamics of this refusal within the ancient world as well as beyond. The book is of interest to specialists in classics, rhetoric, queer studies, and psychoanalytic literary criticism.

298 pages, Hardcover

First published June 18, 1999

About the author

Erik Gunderson focuses on the literature and culture of the Roman era. His work explores the relationship between the self and institutions. He has written two monographs on rhetorical culture. The first explores the rhetoric, performance, and the male self. The second surveys the fictive world of declamation and its bearing on questions of Roman identity. His third book examines Romans as scholars and their relationship to their own cultural legacy. He has also edited the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric. He has written a monograph on Seneca, ethics, and literature as well as a study of Plautus. His articles explore topics such as the Roman arena, biography, epistles, historiography, philology, satire, and tragedy.

His undergraduate study was conducted at the University of Chicago. His masters and doctorate were earned at The University of California at Berkeley. He was formerly an assistant and then associate professor of Greek and Latin at The Ohio State University. He has been a member of the University of Toronto since July 2007.