The Allure of Disgust in Ancient Rome: Knowledge, Poetics, and the Senses

FAIN: FT-291501-23

Rebecca F. Moorman
Providence College (Providence, RI 02918-7000)

Research and writing of a book that examines the aesthetics of disgust and negative affect experience in classical Latin literature.

This project explores the aesthetics of negative feelings and multisensory experience in classical Latin literature, demonstrating how ancient philosophers, poets, and literary critics used disgust to create new pathways for knowledge and pleasure in Roman culture. I argue that Roman authors were so committed to sensory-based intellectual engagement that they even developed avenues for pleasure and instruction in the negative affective experience of disgust. Challenging modern ideas of canon by studying four Roman authors rarely discussed together – the Epicurean poet Lucretius, the Stoic tragedian Seneca, the Stoic satirist Persius, and the Platonist-cum-novelist Apuleius – I recover an overlooked aesthetic of disgust in Latin literature and Roman philosophy. By focusing on disgust, the book offers classicists a new perspective on the relationship between dominant and subaltern expressions of the self, the relationship between knowledge and sensation, and the role of art in society.