Latin literature

When thinking about the current state of the study of Latin literature and about where the field might be heading next, the obvious place to start for this review is Roy Gibson and Christopher Whitton's Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Literature . At more than 900 pages, it is a very substantial and exciting read. In fifteen chapters, plus an introduction by the editors and an envoi by Mary Beard, the contributors – all well-known and established experts in their areas of research – discuss the canons (Peirano) and periodizations (Kelly) of Latin literature, some of its key questions and methodological tools (‘author and identity’, Sharrock; intertextuality, O'Rourke/Pelttari), as well as its relationship with adjacent fields: medieval Latin (Stover), Neo-Latin (Haskell), reception (Uden), linguistics (Clackson), material culture (Squire/Elsner), philosophy (Volk), political thought (Lowrie), Roman history (Lavan), Greek (Goldhill), as well as the national traditions that shape the discipline (Fuhrer) and, one of its key tasks, the editing of Latin texts (Huskey/Kaster). As the editors themselves admit in their introduction, the topics covered in the volume are by necessity selective and could very well have included others that are now only touched upon in individual chapters, such as questions of gender, rhetoric, religion, education, science, or law.