Marguerite Yourcenar’s Hadrian:Writing the Life of a Roman Emperor (Phoenix Supplementary Volumes)

by:Keith Bradley (Author)

Publisher:University of Toronto Press

Publication Date: 2024/2/23

Language:English

Print Length:488 pages

ISBN-10:1487548818

ISBN-13:9781487548810

Book Description

Marguerite Yourcenar is best known as the author of the 1951 novel Mémoires d’Hadrien, her recreation of the life of the Roman emperor Hadrian. The work can be examined from the perspective of the issues raised by writing Roman imperial biography at large and the many ways in which Mémoires has a claim to historical authenticity.In Marguerite Yourcenar’s Hadrian, Keith Bradley explains how Mémoires d’Hadrien came to be written, gives details of Yourcenar’s own biography, and describes some of the intricate historical problems that her novel’s portrait of Hadrian presents. He draws on Yourcenar’s correspondence, her interviews with joualists, and her literary corpus as a whole, emphasizing Yourcenar’s profound knowledge of the ancient evidence on which her life of Hadrian is based and exploiting a wide range of contemporary Yourcenarian criticism.The book pays special attention to the methods by which Yourcenar believed Hadrian’s life history to be recoverable, compares examples of mode life-writing, and contrasts the procedures of conventional Roman biographers. Revealing how and why Mémoires d’Hadrien is as it is, Marguerite Yourcenar’s Hadrian illustrates how imaginative literary recreation is often little different from historical speculation.

About the Author

Marguerite Yourcenar is best known as the author of the 1951 novel Mémoires d’Hadrien, her recreation of the life of the Roman emperor Hadrian. The work can be examined from the perspective of the issues raised by writing Roman imperial biography at large and the many ways in which Mémoires has a claim to historical authenticity.In Marguerite Yourcenar’s Hadrian, Keith Bradley explains how Mémoires d’Hadrien came to be written, gives details of Yourcenar’s own biography, and describes some of the intricate historical problems that her novel’s portrait of Hadrian presents. He draws on Yourcenar’s correspondence, her interviews with joualists, and her literary corpus as a whole, emphasizing Yourcenar’s profound knowledge of the ancient evidence on which her life of Hadrian is based and exploiting a wide range of contemporary Yourcenarian criticism.The book pays special attention to the methods by which Yourcenar believed Hadrian’s life history to be recoverable, compares examples of mode life-writing, and contrasts the procedures of conventional Roman biographers. Revealing how and why Mémoires d’Hadrien is as it is, Marguerite Yourcenar’s Hadrian illustrates how imaginative literary recreation is often little different from historical speculation.

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