Structure and arrangement of the epigrams in the books of Martial

• Grant number: 16/22736-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: April 03, 2017
• End date: July 02, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Robson Tadeu Cesila
• Grantee: Robson Tadeu Cesila
• Host Investigator: Maria Cristina de Castro-Maia de Sousa Pimentel
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract

The interest of the ancient poet with the structuring of his books, performed in the careful ordering of the epigrams within each book, goes back at least to the Hellenistic period, being also present in the work of the Latin poets of the Augustan Age and their successors. In this research, I intend to study this matter within the work of the Latin epigrammatist Marcus Valerius Martialis, who produced his poetry in the second half of the 1st century AD, mainly during the principates of the Flavian dynasty. I intend to examine the macrostructure of a part of his 15 books of epigrams, published between 80 and 101-102 AD, and to demonstrate how they are organized according to certain principles of arrangement of the poems within them, in a process of construction of relationships between the parts (the epigrams) and between the parts and the whole (the book) that aims to create certain rhetorical and poetic effects; these effects add new layers of meaning to the interpretation of the individual poems, of the books in which the poems are inserted and of work of the poet as a whole. A second objective of the research will be the production, already begun, of a bilingual anthology of 150 epigrams by the author, with poetic translation, notes and comments of my own. Many of these anthologized epigrams will even serve to exemplify the first objective set out above, since they are very important in the subjacent project of internal arrangement of Martial's books.