Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome.

KASTER, R.A.,

ISBN 10: 0195140788 / ISBN 13: 9780195140781

Published by Oxford University Press, 2005

About this Item

Oxford University Press, Oxford (.), 2005. IX,245p. Bound wrps. Nice copy. 'The importance of Kaster's new book cannot be overstated, both as a study of the Roman ideology of self-restraint in its own right and as a model of careful and intelligent scholarship that build from the ancient evidence. (.) K. is concerned with the operation of moral qualities in a social setting. His aim is to understand 'through Roman eyes' 'the basic structures of thought and behavior that converge on a given emotion-term' without bringing to bear inappropriate a priori assumptions about the evidence. Time and again K. demonstrates that we can never assume that our emotional economy maps on to that of the Romans. (.) Though K. starts from lexical analysis (.) he goes far beyond that to embrace a 'holistic approach' which scrutinizes an emotion from presentation through evaluation and response, deploying approaches developed in the fields of philosophy and psychology (.). K. includes many citations, brief and extensive, of his source material to show how he formed his conclusions.' (SUSANNA BRAUND in The Classical Review (New Series), 2006, pp.429).

Seller Inventory # 26807

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome.
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195140788
• ISBN 13: 9780195140781
• Binding: Hardcover

About this title

Synopsis

Classical Culture and Society (Series Editors: Joseph A. Farrell, University of Pennsylvania, and Ian Morris, Stanford University) is a new series from Oxford that emphasizes innovative, imaginative scholarship by leading scholars in the field of ancient culture. Among the topics covered will be the historical and cultural background of Greek and Roman literary texts; the production and reception of cultural artifacts; the economic basis of culture; the history of ideas, values, and concepts; and the relationship between politics and/or social practice and ancient forms of symbolic expression (religion, art, language, and ritual, among others). Interdisciplinary approaches and original, broad-ranging research form the backbone of this series, which will serve classicists as well as appealing to scholars and educated readers in related fields.

Emotion, Restraint, and Community examines the ways in which emotions, and talk about emotions, interacted with the ethics of the Roman upper classes in the late Republic and early Empire. By considering how various Roman forms of fear, dismay, indignation, and revulsion created an economy of displeasure that shaped society in constructive ways, the book casts new light both on the Romans and on cross-cultural understanding of emotions.

About the Author

Robert A. Kaster is Professor of Classics and Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin at Princeton University.