Chapter 10 - Theology’s Shadow

Summary

This chapter offers a trenchant criticism of the discipline of classical philology as practised today. At its heart is a consideration of the Cambridge series, ‘Roman Literature and its Contexts,’ and the shifting view of classical philology that the series promotes. Above all, the chapter shows how the hold of the godlike author on the imagination of classical philologists is as strong as ever. The authority of a single source for meaning continues in many quarters to be upheld; its relation to the theology of monotheism remains unacknowledged. This critique is illuminated with a performance of an alternative mode of reading: a pliant, tentative, open-ended interpretation of one historically contingent text by one fallible, human, historically contingent reader. Uncovering the entanglement of classical philology and theology dethrones simultaneously both the godlike author and the godlike scholar.