The Touch and Taste of War in Latin Battle Narrative
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Annemarie Ambühl
Annemarie Ambühl Kinder und junge Helden. Innovative Aspekte des Umgangs mit der literarischen Tradition bei Kallimachos (Peeters 2005), andKrieg und Bürgerkrieg bei Lucan und in der griechischen Literatur. Studien zur Rezeption der attischen Tragödie und der hellenistischen Dichtung im Bellum Civile (De Gruyter 2015). She is also editor of theThersites special issueWar of the Senses – The Senses in War. Interactions and Tensions between Representations of War in Classical and Modern Culture (2016) and assistant editor ofNature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry (Peeters 2009).
Abstract
Latin battle narratives exhibit visual, auditory, and even olfactory phenomena: swords glint, steel clangs, and the stench of blood permeates battlefields. These manifestations of multisensoriality are often implicit, as exemplified by the prominence of the ‘gaze’ in epic poetry. This article focuses on the two other senses, which have received less scholarly attention in discussions of battle narrative: touch and taste. In the former category are expressions such as ‘biting the dust’ (Hom. Il. 2.418) along with depictions of cannibalism in epic and historiographic texts. In the latter category are experiences such as Jocasta’s breast being scratched by Polynices’ armour (Stat. Theb. 7), along with a pervasive discourse on the ‘roughness’ of war and the ‘handling’ of casualties in aftermath episodes; these conceptual metaphors generate ‘partial altermedial illusions’ by enhancing, but not replacing, the primary medium of the literary text which they inhabit. As this chapter highlights, therefore, appeals to sensory perception are ambivalent in character: on the one hand, they facilitate audience engagement with the text via immersion, enactivism, and embodiment, but on the other hand they alienate readers by underscoring the fundamental ‘untellability’ of war.
About the author
Annemarie Ambühl is Associate Professor in Classical Philology at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universität Mainz. She is author of two monographs on Greek and Latin literature: Kinder und junge Helden. Innovative Aspekte des Umgangs mit der literarischen Tradition bei Kallimachos (Peeters 2005), and Krieg und Bürgerkrieg bei Lucan und in der griechischen Literatur. Studien zur Rezeption der attischen Tragödie und der hellenistischen Dichtung im Bellum Civile (De Gruyter 2015). She is also editor of the Thersites special issue War of the Senses – The Senses in War. Interactions and Tensions between Representations of War in Classical and Modern Culture (2016) and assistant editor of Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry (Peeters 2009).
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Introduction
- Sensorial Intermedialities in Roman Letters: Cicero, Horace, and Ovid
- Quotations in Roman Prose as Intermedial Phenomena
- Monumental Absences in Ancient Historiography
- Inscriptional Intermediality in Livy
- Intermediality in the Metamorphoses
- The Touch and Taste of War in Latin Battle Narrative
- Stories from the Frontier: Bridging Past and Present at Hadrian’s Wall
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index Rerum
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Introduction
- Sensorial Intermedialities in Roman Letters: Cicero, Horace, and Ovid
- Quotations in Roman Prose as Intermedial Phenomena
- Monumental Absences in Ancient Historiography
- Inscriptional Intermediality in Livy
- Intermediality in the Metamorphoses
- The Touch and Taste of War in Latin Battle Narrative
- Stories from the Frontier: Bridging Past and Present at Hadrian’s Wall
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index Rerum
