Exemplarity: Beyond Intertextuality

Working Papers in Nervan, Trajanic and Hadrianic Literature 1.20 (20/5/14)

‘Exemplarity: Beyond Intertextuality’                                                                                            Rebecca Langlands, 20th May, 2014

This working paper is an abstract for a paper that was presented at the project’s second conference in Rostock. It examines an exemplary anecdote narrated by both Suetonius and Tacitus, and considers the reasons why the two authors tell and contextualise the anecdote so differently. What might it tell us about post-Flavian approaches to exemplarity? What kind of intertextuality is at work here? What might it tell us about the evolution of exemplary stories into a form of cultural memory that transcended their textual existence? And what ongoing interaction between written exempla and cultural memory is recoverable here?

Exemplarity: Beyond Intertextuality