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The Ancient Entomological Bookworm
- Arethusa
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 53, Number 1, Winter 2020
- pp. 1-24
- 10.1353/are.2020.0002
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
This article traces how the entomological bookworm shaped the historical practices, poetics, and literary discourse of Greco-Roman book culture in the early imperial period. I argue that attending to the materiality of bookworms illuminates another realm of poetics and rhetoric around reading (and non-reading), with special focus on Ovid’s exile poetry and several Greek epigrams from the Garland of Philip. Building a bridge from the methodology of book history to literary criticism and metaphor, I ultimately show how the bookworm participates in the discursive construction and stigmatization of a certain kind of inept, pedantic reader.