The idea of Africa as a location of the marvelous has a long history in Greco-Roman literature but only appears to become politicized with the reorganization of space and ethnography that accompanies the transformation of Rome from a Republic into an Empire. This paper looks at the increasingly prevalent monstrification of Africa and Aethiopia in Greco-Roman literature and at the uses of these texts in selected literature from early-modern Europe, which employed the information handed down by the Greco-Roman ethnographies to further or justify the expansion of European countries into African territories.
About the Speaker
Professor Elena Giusti specializes in Roman literature, especially Augustan poetry and Virgil, combining philology with postcolonial, feminist, and ideological critique. Her monograph on Carthage in the Aeneid highlights the poem’s role in shaping Roman identity and encoding war memory. Her current work includes a commentary on Aeneid 5 and a study of Dido. A second monograph examines Roman representations of Africa under Augustus and Nero, tracing early constructions of race and alterity. She also researches textual absence and conspiracy, and collaborates widely on Classics, race, and gender.