Following Hadrian: A Second-Century Journey through the Roman Empire
by Elizabeth Speller
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Book Summary Information
Author: Elizabeth SpellerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-10-14
ISBN: 0195176138
Number of pages: 361
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780195176131
- Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
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Book Reviews of Following Hadrian: A Second-Century Journey through the Roman Empire
Book Review: The status of truth
Summary: 5 Stars
Speller's Hadrian is a man rounded by a vareity of registers, given plausibility by his creator's ability to play with different kinds of authoritative voice. I use the word 'creator' not to refer to a personal god or gods but to the writer who has given him pyschological verisimilitude. For, despite this being a fine biography, Speller uses a deft blend of 'straight' history and fiction to offer the thesis that there is no single, univocal truth to be discovered about any one character, any one subject even. This book is about more than Hadrian, it is about the status of evidence, the nature of written account(s). The question of which is the more sustainable version, the historian's or the fiction writer's, implicitly is raised and deliberately not answered, for the writer is certain that there is no answer. However, in one sense a provisional claim to reality is laid down: poetry is beautiful and it is true, although we might not be able to say why this is so. Elizabeth Seller is apparently an award-winning poet, and it shows: the prose, in each of its primary registers, is clearly poetic, could only have been written by a poet. And yet that does not mean it is in any way self-indulgent: Hadrian and his women are the subjects of this book, not Speller's undoubted poetic talent. I'm grateful to have read this lovely, rich and powerful biography.
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