The Anxieties of Pliny, the Younger

Download or read book The Anxieties of Pliny, the Younger written by Stanley E. Hoffer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1999 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a new understanding of Pliny's letters by combining historical analysis of the social pressures that shape Pliny's authorial pose with close literary analysis of the letters themselves. It demonstrates how ruling-class ideology is disseminated and how it shapes the literary persona and personal identity of a ruling-class member. The powerful heuristic tool of examining the interplay between confidence and anxieties in the letters will help restore Pliny's relatively neglected masterpiece to a more prominent place in undergraduate Latin and Roman Civilization courses.