POETRY AND ART FROM ALEXANDER TO AUGUSTUS. (P.) Linant de Bellefonds, (É.) Prioux, (A.) Rouveret (edd.) D'Alexandre à Auguste. Dynamiques de la création dans les arts visuels et la poésie

Abstract

This attractive volume presents the proceedings of the final colloquium of the CAIM research project (‘Culture antiquaire et invention de la modernité’) held at the INHA in Paris in May 2012. In the introduction, the editors express their wish to interrogate ‘les possibilités de croisement entre texte et image’ from the early Hellenistic to Augustan ages and to pose ‘des questions d’ordre méthodologique sur la façon même de mettre en relation les deux formes de création artistique’ (p. 8). These are important issues, and the editors have assembled an impressive cast of scholars to investigate them. Of the 22 contributions, arranged in six sections of varying cohesion, two are written in English, two in Italian and the remaining eighteen in French. As often in such proceedings, the papers are eclectic and wide-ranging and, although a great number are of excellent quality, the central concerns of the project are addressed inconsistently throughout. It is only when we come to the conclusion by Rouveret that an attempt is made to synthesise the diverse range of topics treated; I feel that the avowedly ‘brève introduction’ (only two pages) could have been considerably expanded to lay out the key questions more clearly.