Nox Philologiae: Aulus Gellius and the Fantasy of the Roman Library

by Erik Gunderson

In this strikingly original and playful work, Erik Gunderson examines questions of reading the past—an enterprise extending from antiquity to the present day. This esoteric and original study focuses on the equally singular work of Aulus Gellius—a Roman author and grammarian (ca. 120-180 A.D.), possibly of African origin. Gellius’s only work, the twenty-volume Noctes Atticae , is an exploding, sometimes seemingly random text-cum-diary in which Gellius jotted down everything of interest he heard in conversation or read in contemporary books. Comprising notes on Roman and classical grammar, geometry, philosophy, and history, it is a one-work overview of Latin scholarship, thought, and intellectual culture, a combination condensed library and cabinet of curiosities.

            Gunderson tackles Gellius with exuberance, placing him in the larger culture of antiquarian literature. Purposely echoing Gellius’s own swooping word-play and digressions, he explores the techniques by which knowledge was produced and consumed in Gellius’s day, as well as in our own time. The resulting book is as much pure creative fun as it is a major work of scholarship informed by the theories of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida.

344 pages, Hardcover

First published December 8, 2008

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.