Augustan literature and Augustan ‘ideology': An ongoing reassessment. Trans. by M. V. Shumilin

Abstract

For the topic of “Literature and Politics in Antiquity” the Augustan period, and especially the relationship of Augustus and the poets, has become a paradigm. This paper surveys and critiques the main trends of changing assessments, and the reasons for them, from antiquity to the present. I follow Peter White's foundational demonstration that the “political” interpretation of Augustan poetry is an anachronistic imposition; further, I briefy examine the imprecision of the notion of “ideology”. By analysis of some representative examples, such as Horace's Ode 1.2, I develop what is a more accurate notion, i.e. that of a national discourse or conversation with many participants besides Augustus with many different perspectives. While Syme's model of “the organization of opinion” has been largely discarded, binary models have proved too simplistic and have increasingly given way to more dynamic approaches, which are also more frmly grounded in the actual realities of the time, including the intentional polysemy of works of art. Another interpretive issue is the projection of the present into the past, which has been highlighted anew in studies of cultural and historical memory.