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Colonial And Postcolonial Literature Migrant Metaphors Pdf Download
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Yetta Fraunfelter
Dec 4, 2023, 7:05:01 PM12/4/23
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Second, I found that the framing of migrants is an active process as opposed to being flatly descriptive. While this may be intuitive, it was clear that the framing acted as a device through which police and immigration agents cast judgment and expressed ambivalence toward their work in order to rationalize it. It was here that metaphors and vivid descriptions come to the fore and demonstrate why understanding how migrants are framed is vital for potentially transforming racialized narratives.
This article argues that the concept of migrant literature, developed in postcolonial studies, is a useful tool for analysing Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire (27 BC-AD 68). The city of Rome attracted huge numbers of migrants from across the Mediterranean. Among them were many writers from Hellenized provinces like Egypt, Syria and Asia, who wrote in Greek. Leaving their native regions and travelling to Rome, they moved between cultures, responding in Greek to the new world order. Early imperial Greek writers include Strabo of Amasia, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Timagenes of Alexandria, Crinagoras of Mytilene, Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus. What connects these authors of very different origins, styles, beliefs, and literary genres is migrancy. They are migrant writers whose works are characterized by in-betweenness, ambivalence and polyphony.
Colonial And Postcolonial Literature Migrant Metaphors Pdf Download
Download File https://t.co/Uq3clXjOpy
The Early Roman Empire (27 BC-AD 68) was an age of migration. The city of Rome attracted huge numbers of migrants from across the Mediterranean. While cultural mobility was not new in this period, the foundation of a globalized empire gave a new impulse to migration, with an unprecedented impact on literature. Among the migrants were many writers from Hellenized provinces like Egypt, Syria and Asia, who wrote in Greek. They include Strabo of Amasia and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Crinagoras of Mytilene, Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus: a geographer, a rhetorician, a historian, a poet, a Jewish philosopher and an early Christian apostle. Leaving their native regions and travelling to Rome, they moved between cultures, responding in Greek to the new world order.
The concept of migrant literature has been developed in the context of postcolonial studies. It has been shown that the literature produced by migrants is characterized by in-betweenness, ambivalence, and polyphony. Without claiming that ancient migration and modern migration are identical, I will argue that these three categories are essential to our understanding of the works written in Greek in the Julio-Claudian age.1 Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire can be considered migrant literature that moves between Greek, Roman and local identities, giving voice to ambivalent and polyphonic responses to Rome.
(3) The importance of local perspectives has been powerfully put forward in the volume Local Knowledge and Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World.9 The essays in this book rightly draw attention to the fact that the globalization of the Roman Empire went hand in hand with a new focus on local identities.10 It includes essays on microidentities in Crete, Termessus (in Anatolia), and Paphlagonia (near the Black Sea). The volume does however not address the fact that many authors of Greek imperial literature were migrant writers.
The concept of migrant literature has been developed in postcolonial literary studies.24 It has proven its value in studies on contemporary literature, but in scholarship on ancient literature it is rather new.25 The model is particularly useful for interpreting the polymorphic corpus of Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire, as cultural mobility was one of its defining dimensions. Migrant literature is here understood as literature produced by writers who temporarily or permanently moved away from their native region, narrating experiences of migration, and more generally reflecting a cosmopolitan society deeply characterized by cultural mobility.
Starting from the later 1980s the category of migrant literature has been used to analyse the literary output of a group of writers whose geographic and cultural affiliations are unstable, dynamic and displaced.26 They include authors like Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, Vikram Seth, and many others. Migration plays an important role both in the lives of these authors and in their work. Cultural interaction is a dominant theme of their novels, which typically move across geographical, cultural and historical spaces.
Before we apply the modern concept of migrant literature to ancient texts, we must ask whether ancient and modern migration are the same thing. There are two important differences between ancient and modern migration. First, modern models of migration are closely associated with the crossing of borders between nation states: these did not exist in the ancient world.27 Second, the colonial relationship between the modern western world and formerly colonized countries differs from that between Rome and its (Hellenized) provinces. Most importantly, the status of Greek culture in Rome was unlike that of any modern colonized region. The deliberate adoption of a Greek style (Hellenism) could be practiced by Romans, Greeks and locals alike, forming a kind of common ground (and language) between different cultures.28 The position of French, Spanish or English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is quite different, as (unlike ancient Greek) these languages are primarily associated with the colonizing power.
Postcolonial literary theory has developed several concepts that have been successfully applied in recent studies on migrant literature in English, French and German.33 Three of them will be particularly useful for examining migrant literature in the Early Roman Empire:
Another example can further illustrate the functions of in-betweenness, ambivalence and polyphony in Greek migrant literature. Crinagoras of Mytilene was a poet from the island of Lesbos, who travelled to Rome as an ambassador of his hometown.43 He became closely connected with the family of the Roman emperor, as several of his epigrams demonstrate. In the following poem he writes about a goat who accompanies emperor Augustus on a sea journey to (presumably) Greece:
In the remaining part of this article I will briefly discuss the genres mentioned above and their most important representatives.49 My aim in doing so is to show that the concept of migrant literature may cast new light on these different texts and thereby help us to achieve a better understanding of the diverse body of Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire.
Jewish and Christian texts are often ignored in surveys of Greek literature, as modern academia is divided between fields like Classics, Judaism and Early Christianity. If, however, we understand Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire to be (migrant) literature written in the Greek language, we can go and should go beyond traditional disciplinary borders. Two prominent Jewish authors belong to the timeframe chosen here: Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BC-AD 50) and Paul of Tarsus (ca. AD 5-67).
While this article concentrates on the literature written between 27 BC and AD 68, it is obvious that migration and migrant literature are also highly relevant notions for understanding Greek literature of the later Hellenistic period (e.g. Diodorus Siculus, Philodemus of Gadara) and the Second Sophistic (e.g. Dio of Prusa, Aelius Aristides).
eebf2c3492
This article argues that the concept of migrant literature, developed in postcolonial studies, is a useful tool for analysing Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire (27 BC-AD 68). The city of Rome attracted huge numbers of migrants from across the Mediterranean. Among them were many writers from Hellenized provinces like Egypt, Syria and Asia, who wrote in Greek. Leaving their native regions and travelling to Rome, they moved between cultures, responding in Greek to the new world order. Early imperial Greek writers include Strabo of Amasia, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Timagenes of Alexandria, Crinagoras of Mytilene, Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus. What connects these authors of very different origins, styles, beliefs, and literary genres is migrancy. They are migrant writers whose works are characterized by in-betweenness, ambivalence and polyphony.
Colonial And Postcolonial Literature Migrant Metaphors Pdf Download
Download File https://t.co/Uq3clXjOpy
The Early Roman Empire (27 BC-AD 68) was an age of migration. The city of Rome attracted huge numbers of migrants from across the Mediterranean. While cultural mobility was not new in this period, the foundation of a globalized empire gave a new impulse to migration, with an unprecedented impact on literature. Among the migrants were many writers from Hellenized provinces like Egypt, Syria and Asia, who wrote in Greek. They include Strabo of Amasia and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Crinagoras of Mytilene, Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus: a geographer, a rhetorician, a historian, a poet, a Jewish philosopher and an early Christian apostle. Leaving their native regions and travelling to Rome, they moved between cultures, responding in Greek to the new world order.
The concept of migrant literature has been developed in the context of postcolonial studies. It has been shown that the literature produced by migrants is characterized by in-betweenness, ambivalence, and polyphony. Without claiming that ancient migration and modern migration are identical, I will argue that these three categories are essential to our understanding of the works written in Greek in the Julio-Claudian age.1 Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire can be considered migrant literature that moves between Greek, Roman and local identities, giving voice to ambivalent and polyphonic responses to Rome.
(3) The importance of local perspectives has been powerfully put forward in the volume Local Knowledge and Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World.9 The essays in this book rightly draw attention to the fact that the globalization of the Roman Empire went hand in hand with a new focus on local identities.10 It includes essays on microidentities in Crete, Termessus (in Anatolia), and Paphlagonia (near the Black Sea). The volume does however not address the fact that many authors of Greek imperial literature were migrant writers.
The concept of migrant literature has been developed in postcolonial literary studies.24 It has proven its value in studies on contemporary literature, but in scholarship on ancient literature it is rather new.25 The model is particularly useful for interpreting the polymorphic corpus of Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire, as cultural mobility was one of its defining dimensions. Migrant literature is here understood as literature produced by writers who temporarily or permanently moved away from their native region, narrating experiences of migration, and more generally reflecting a cosmopolitan society deeply characterized by cultural mobility.
Starting from the later 1980s the category of migrant literature has been used to analyse the literary output of a group of writers whose geographic and cultural affiliations are unstable, dynamic and displaced.26 They include authors like Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, Vikram Seth, and many others. Migration plays an important role both in the lives of these authors and in their work. Cultural interaction is a dominant theme of their novels, which typically move across geographical, cultural and historical spaces.
Before we apply the modern concept of migrant literature to ancient texts, we must ask whether ancient and modern migration are the same thing. There are two important differences between ancient and modern migration. First, modern models of migration are closely associated with the crossing of borders between nation states: these did not exist in the ancient world.27 Second, the colonial relationship between the modern western world and formerly colonized countries differs from that between Rome and its (Hellenized) provinces. Most importantly, the status of Greek culture in Rome was unlike that of any modern colonized region. The deliberate adoption of a Greek style (Hellenism) could be practiced by Romans, Greeks and locals alike, forming a kind of common ground (and language) between different cultures.28 The position of French, Spanish or English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is quite different, as (unlike ancient Greek) these languages are primarily associated with the colonizing power.
Postcolonial literary theory has developed several concepts that have been successfully applied in recent studies on migrant literature in English, French and German.33 Three of them will be particularly useful for examining migrant literature in the Early Roman Empire:
Another example can further illustrate the functions of in-betweenness, ambivalence and polyphony in Greek migrant literature. Crinagoras of Mytilene was a poet from the island of Lesbos, who travelled to Rome as an ambassador of his hometown.43 He became closely connected with the family of the Roman emperor, as several of his epigrams demonstrate. In the following poem he writes about a goat who accompanies emperor Augustus on a sea journey to (presumably) Greece:
In the remaining part of this article I will briefly discuss the genres mentioned above and their most important representatives.49 My aim in doing so is to show that the concept of migrant literature may cast new light on these different texts and thereby help us to achieve a better understanding of the diverse body of Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire.
Jewish and Christian texts are often ignored in surveys of Greek literature, as modern academia is divided between fields like Classics, Judaism and Early Christianity. If, however, we understand Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire to be (migrant) literature written in the Greek language, we can go and should go beyond traditional disciplinary borders. Two prominent Jewish authors belong to the timeframe chosen here: Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BC-AD 50) and Paul of Tarsus (ca. AD 5-67).
While this article concentrates on the literature written between 27 BC and AD 68, it is obvious that migration and migrant literature are also highly relevant notions for understanding Greek literature of the later Hellenistic period (e.g. Diodorus Siculus, Philodemus of Gadara) and the Second Sophistic (e.g. Dio of Prusa, Aelius Aristides).
eebf2c3492
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