Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature

The deliberate adoption of a ‘weaker’ voice by a speaker not obliged to do so is a surprisingly widespread phenomenon in Latin literature, and one which has received little critical attention to date. In this volume a series of case studies explore this strategy across a wide range of genres, periods, and authors, examining how it works to establish, perpetuate, and challenge hierarchies and values in very different literary and cultural-political contexts, from poetics and choices of genre, to social status and intra- and intercultural relations.