Classical Constructions: Papers in Memory of Don Fowler (review)

Don Fowler is still one of the most inspiring critics of ancient literature in his generation: after his early death in 1999, the most influential among his papers have been gathered in the posthumous volume Roman Constructions (Oxford 2000: one paper at the same level of importance, "Laocoon's point of view," first appears in Classical Constructions). Also representative of his intellectual generosity and of his unique tone of voice are his subject reviews (Latin literature) in Greece and Rome 1986–93, his lecture notes on Horace forthcoming in the Cambridge Classical Journal, and even his pioneering interventions in the "Classics List." The next step in making his intellectual legacy accessible should be the publication of his incomplete, fascinating manuscript on books, texts, and performance in the interpretation of Greek and Roman literature (Unrolling the Text, forthcoming OUP).

One way to sum up his achievement is to say that many of his memorable papers are responses to and critical dialogues with the likes of Lukacs, Irigaray, Rorty, Eco, Lacan, Benjamin, Genette, and Kristeva, instead of being "applications" or exercises in transposition, as is often the case with scholars of classical literature. His main project was merging the theoretical energy of postmodern literary studies in Europe and the United States with the densely empirical expertise typical of the Oxford tradition, and facilitating outspoken critical discussions across the traditional boundaries. His personality was so magnetic (and entertaining) that people who have known him are still feeling a sense of mutual community, as this volume of memorial essays eloquently shows: yet, as an enthusiast of the opening up of Classics, as a supporter of open sources and international contact, as a critic of elitism and of Mandarin Oxbridge, Don would especially relish to see his work circulated, appropriated, and discussed beyond the reach of his own (however impressive) personal influence. His work is a resource not only in studies of Lucretius and Epicureanism, his initial research area, but also in nodal points of current and future research in Classics, such as the polarity of historicism and formalism, the history of the book, competing approaches to narrative, ecphrasis, gender, closure, and the effect of electronic media on the analysis of ancient texts.

The contributors stay true to Don's example in combining research on ancient documents and questions about methods and approaches. There are papers on Epicurean Montaigne (Mitsis), evolutionism and Lucretius (Gordon Campbell), Roman law and the cognitive structure of De rerum natura (Schiesaro), Agamben's approach to exemplarity and the intellectual connection between Cicero and Augustus (Lowrie), villa literature and the relationship of poetry to location (Llewelyn Morgan), Virgil and Ovid as alternative/complementary models in reception history (Philip Hardie), body and textuality in Horace (Farrell), Ovid's exile and conspiracy theory (Hinds), the politics of Silius Italicus between Republicanism and Empire (Tipping), the politics of Lucan's presence in Petrarch's Africa (Leigh), translation studies and intertextuality (Deborah Roberts), the tense relationship between fictionality and philosophy (Laird), human life and textual representation in Tacitus' Agricola (Stephen Harrison). The quality of the editing (Heyworth, Harrison and Peta Fowler) is superb, and the papers have lost nothing (almost) of the freshness they had back in 2000, when they were delivered in Jesus College, Oxford.

Readers will notice a close relationship, an unusual one even in the best examples of the genre "Gedenkschrift," between the intellectual quality of the papers and the style of research of the titular hero: it is not so much a matter of a "school," let alone of a closed circle, and a number of contributors are in fact younger contemporaries of Fowler, rather than pupils: it is more of a broad agreement that Classics has a function in today's culture when it helps promoting critical awareness and a sense of responsibility in interpreting the past. Not by chance, many of the contributors refer to Don's fondness for interpretive aporias and crisis points of interpretability...