French Literature Reviews - 2026

B. Dufallo, The Captor's Image - Greek Culture in Roman Ecphrasis
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Basil Dufallo, The Captor's Image - Greek Culture in Roman Ecphrasis

Oxford University Press, 2013.

304 p.

EAN 9780199735877

$74.00

Publisher's Description:

An influential view of ecphrasis--the literary description of art objects--chiefly treats it as a way for authors to write about their own texts without appearing to do so, and even insists upon the aesthetic dominance of the literary text over the visual image. However, when considering its use in ancient Roman literature, this interpretation proves insufficient. The Captor's Image argues for the need to see Roman ecphrasis, with its prevalent focus on Hellenic images, as a site of subtle, ongoing competition between Greek and Roman cultures. Through close readings of ecphrases in a wide range of Latin authors--from Plautus, Catullus, and Horace to Vergil, Ovid, and Martial, among others--Dufallo contends that Roman ecphrasis reveals an ambivalent receptivity to Greek culture, an attitude with implications for the shifting notions of Roman identity in the Republican and Imperial periods. Individual chapters explore how the simple assumption of a self-asserting ecphrastic text is called into question by comic performance, intentionally inconsistent narrative, satire, Greek religious iconography, the contradictory associations of epic imagery, and the author's subjection to a patron. Visual material such as wall painting, statuary, and drinkware vividly contextualizes the discussion. As the first book-length treatment of artistic ecphrasis at Rome, The Captor's Image resituates a major literary trope within its hybrid cultural context while advancing the idea of ecphrasis as a cultural practice through which the Romans sought to redefine their identity with, and against, Greekness.

Reviews:

"Using ecphrasis as a lens to focus on Rome's conflicted receptivity to Greek culture, Basil Dufallo's subtle and meticulous study offers a searching examination of a trope to which Roman authors repeatedly turn as they seek to articulate the cultural and ideological tensions in which they operate."--Duncan F. Kennedy, University of Bristol

"Professor Dufallo's brilliant survey of ecphrasis in Latin authors from Naevius to Apuleius expands the conversation by moving from strictly literary readings to larger cultural issues. With Greek art and literature always in the foreground, Dufallo directs us through a series of comparisons with, and reflections of, the Hellenic past as a crucial formative influence on Rome's voyage of self-discovery. A major achievement."--Michael C. J. Putnam, Brown University.

Basil Dufallo is Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan.

Ecphrasis, traditionally understood in classical scholarship as the verbal description of visual art objects, often functions as a self-referential device through which authors reflect upon their own writing. In Latin literature, however, this rhetorical figure frequently engages with the complex dynamics of cultural exchange and imperial dominance. The study of how Roman texts incorporate descriptions of Greek painting, sculpture, and craftsmanship invites a broader inquiry into how antiquity negotiated the tension between aesthetic imitation and cultural rivalry. Readers interested in classical antiquity and the history of literary tropes may find this volume relevant.

Basil Dufallo examines works by various Latin authors—ranging from Plautus and Catullus to Vergil, Ovid, and Martial—to investigate how references to Hellenic art reflect shifting notions of Roman identity across the Republican and Imperial periods. The discussion incorporates visual material such as wall paintings, statuary, and drinkware to contextualize the literary analyses. Through close readings of these texts, the volume resituates a major literary trope within its hybrid cultural context, presenting ecphrasis as a practice through which Roman writers navigated their complex relationship with the Greek past.