Ancient Roman Literary Gardens: Gender, Genre, and Geopoetics

Gardens are not central in Latin literature, but usually somewhere off to the side, as was often the real garden. They appear, however, in some form in nearly all literary genres of Latin literature—history, satire, epigrams, epics, letters, lyric poetry, elegies, and novels—and often edge their way into larger socio-economic and political discussions about Roman identity, gender, wealth, and land use. Through an analysis of ancient garden studies and close readings of major Latin texts fro...