Hannah Kolzer’s Categorized Bibliography

Primary Sources 

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of helpful commentaries about the Thebaid. Most of the ones that exist are single book commentaries—I’ll add those to this list as I decide which sections I’ll be examining in the thesis.  I’m relying on the Loeb texts for the Latin and the translation by Joyce because I find it clear and accurate. 

Statius, P. Papinius. Statius, Thebaid 8. Edited by Antony Augoustakis. First edition. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016.

• Planning to write about a section from book 8, the scenes in the Nemean grove. The commentary will be helpful. 

Statius, P. Papinius. Thebaid: A Song of Thebes. Translated by Jane Wilson Joyce. Masters of Latin Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.

• Very nice translation with helpful introduction and overviews of each book. Also commentary on her translation.

Statius, P. Papinius. Thebaid, Volume I: Thebaid. Translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Accessed October 20, 2022. https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL207/2004/volume.xml.

Statius, P. Papinius. Thebaid, Volume II: Thebaid. Translated by Jeffrey Henderson. Accessed October 20, 2022. https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL498/2004/volume.xml.

• This and the above are the Loeb text—I’ll be using this version of the latin text for close reading.

Theory About Landscape 

I’m doing a lot of reading in this field, some of which is not going to be super helpful in actually completing this project. Here is a list of the things that I hope will be helpful, or at least that I hope to be able to incorporate into the background of the project.

Bachelard, Gaston, Richard Kearney, and Mark Z. Danielewski. The Poetics of Space. Translated by Maria Jolas. Reprint edition. New York, New York: Penguin Classics, 2014.

• I love this piece and I’m really hoping to be able to work it into the project somewhere. Specifically concerns emotional attachment within the built environment. I think this will help shed light on the affective quality of scenes where cities are sacked or sacred spaces defiled. 

Cosgrove, Denis. “Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 10, no. 1 (1985): 45–62. https://doi.org/10.2307/622249.

• This article criticizes the way “landscape” is used in humanistic geography, claiming that it’s not a particularly useful term. It’s interesting food for thought as I dig myself deeper into the terms and theories I’m planning to use, “landscape” among them.

Heidegger, Martin. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” In Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, 145–61. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

• Can’t write about space and existence without mentioning this. Most of the other theory in this section relies on Heidegger in some way, so I figured I’d put this in the pile. This is certainly the piece by him that’s most useful for understanding relation to —“being-in”—environment.

Lefebvre, Henri. The production of space. Oxford, OX, UK ; Blackwell, 1991.

• Again, foundational work on physical existence, especially the way reality is reconstructed in art and literature and the psychological implications of those processes. Also I just like the piece and want to engage with it more.

Tuan, Yi-fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.

Tuan, Yi-fu. “Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective.” In Philosophy in Geograhy, edited by Stephen Gale and Gunnar Olsson. Theory and Decision Library. Dordrecht: Springer, 1979.

• This and the above were the keys to the idea for this project.

Landscape and Classics/Landscape and Statius

This is a broad category that contains works that engage with landscape studies and the theories of geography and space that I’m working with while also being about classics texts in general or Statius more specifically.

Felton, Debbie. Landscapes of Dread in Classical Antiquity: Negative Emotion in Natural and Constructed Spaces. Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.

• The essays in this book use psychoanalytic theories of emotions, as well as other more modern frameworks related to affect to isolate dread as an emotion (separate from anxiety and fear), and to examine ancient texts for evidence of that feeling. It focuses specifically on the landscapes (yes, using the term according to Tuan’s theories) in ancient texts that evoke dread. The second half of this book is basically no use to me, but the first two sections (“Evoking Dread in Early Greek Literature” and “Anxiety and Dread in the Roman Literary Landscape”) are very interesting. Especially in relation to Statius’ Thebaid, the analysis of Homer will be very useful as a hunting ground for tips and tricks on analyzing the landscape of a piece of epic poetry.

McInerney, Jeremy, and Ineke Sluiter. Valuing Landscape in Classical Antiquity: Natural Environment and Cultural Imagination. Vol. 393. Mnemosyne. Supplements. Boston: BRILL, 2016.

• This is useful in that it focuses on cultural context and aesthetics generally. IT will help me understand the landscape scenes in terms of the contemporary literary context.

Newlands, Carole. “Statius and Ovid: Transforming the Landscape.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 134, no. 1 (2004): 133–55.

• This is interesting because it’s a different, more literary and less philosophical approach to reading landscape in Statius. 

Reitz-Joosse, Bettina, Marian W. Makins, and C. J. Mackie. Landscapes of War in Greek and Roman Literature. Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs. London ; Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

• This uses a lot of the theory that I’m using, though its scope is very broad.

Spencer, Diana. Roman Landscape: Culture and Identity. Greece & Rome. New Surveys in the Classics ; No. 39. Cambridge, U.K. ; Published for the Classical Association by Cambridge University Press, 2010.

• The introduction here has a lot of helpful vocabulary words defined, as well as a general overview of landscape theory as it’s developed across time. The book is in general concerned with aesthetics and landscape as they feature in Classical literature. It relies on a lot of the same theories as the volume above, including Tuan on landscape. This has been very helpful as initial reading, and has pointed me toward many other helpful sources. The chapters of the book are wide-ranging, some being helpful and relevant while others are less so. There’s a chapter in here about Statius, (“Statius, landscape and autarky: between authenticity and delight,”) which I haven’t read yet, but which I will soon. I imagine it will be relevant.

Scholarship about Statius in General

It’s important to know some of the context of the time Statius was writing in. I hope that these pieces will inform my readings even if I don’t end up writing a whole lot about the information they contain.

Dominik, William J., Carole E. Newlands, and Kyle Gervais. Brill’s Companion to Statius. Leiden, UNITED STATES: BRILL, 2015. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/haverford/detail.action?docID=2006469.

• Helpful context about author and time period.

Ganiban, Randall T. Statius and Virgil: The Thebaid and the Reinterpretation of the Aeneid. Cambridge, UNITED KINGDOM: Cambridge University Press, 2007. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/haverford/detail.action?docID=288661

• Relationship between Statius and his literary tradition: how much of the qualities of his work are particular to his writing? Does that matter in interpreting it? 

Garofalo, Laura L. “Anachronism and Artifice: Cultural Retrospection in Book 2 of Statius’ Thebaid.” Classical Philology 115, no. 2 (April 2020): 227–41. https://doi.org/10.1086/707792.

• Particular to the Thebaid, but not concerned with landscape. Again, context for Statius which might help me read more into the themes I notice in my work.

Kozak, Adam. “Deforestation, Metapoetics, and the Ethics of War in Statius’s Thebaid 6.” TAPA 150, no. 2 (2020): 449–71. https://doi.org/10.1353/apa.2020.0017.

• Interesting because it investigates destruction of landscape along with broader ethics of war. This could maybe also fall under the “Landscape and Statius” category, but its scope is a little more broad so I put here instead. 

Manuwald, Gesine, Astrid Voigt, and Franco Montanari. Flavian Epic Interactions. Berlin/Boston, GERMANY: De Gruyter, Inc., 2013. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/haverford/detail.action?docID=1113341.

• General information about the literary tradition of the time Statius was writing, particularly as the literature had to do with the government.

McNelis, Charles. Statius’ Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511483042.

• Dealing with ethics and the general themes of the work—but still in the realm of poetics, which makes me think of Bachelard. 

Newlands, Carole Elizabeth. Statius, Poet between Rome and Naples. Classical Literature and Society. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press, 2012.

• Biographical account of Statius. Will be helpful background and might be part of my thesis introduction. Also has a very thorough bibliography which may be helpful.