Lauren Donovan Ginsberg

Duke University, Classical Studies, Faculty Member

Duke University, Theater Studies, Faculty Member

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I'm an associate professor at Duke University. My research explores early imperial Roman literature with special focus on drama, epic, and historiography as well as the intersection of poetry and history, cultural memory theory, intertextuality, and narratives of civil war.

My book (Staging Memory, Staging Strife: Empire and Civil War in the Octavia; OUP 2017) examines how the anonymous historical drama, the Octavia, rewrites the memory of the Julio-Claudians and reinterprets the literature produced under that dynasty in light of the family's sudden fall from power and the reemergence of civil war in 69 CE.

I'm also working on a number of smaller projects on Roman drama, epic, intertextuality, and Roman cultural memory especially concerning the age of Nero and the early Flavian period.

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Papers by Lauren Donovan Ginsberg

Nero-Antichrist: The Founding and Fashioning of a Paradigm by Shushma Malik

Classical Journal, 2022

Brides, Mourners, Bacchae: Women's Rituals in Roman Literature by Vassiliki Panoussi

Classical World, 2020

Staging Memory, Staging Strife

History as Intertext and Intertext as History in the Octavia

Roman Drama and its Contexts

Tragic Rome? Roman Historical Drama and the Genre of Tragedy

Brill's Companion to Roman Tragedy, 2015

Wars More Than Civil: Memories of Pompey and Caesar in the Octavia

American Journal of Philology, 2013

As the Octavia replays a moment in Rome’s recent history—the struggle to see which Caesar would o... more As the Octavia replays a moment in Rome’s recent history—the struggle to see which Caesar would outlast the rest—its characters simultaneously replay a crucial struggle from the Julio-Claudians’ rise to power: the civil war between Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar. The Octavia’s allusive language recasts its Neronian characters as the Republic’s leading generals, turning strife within the imperial family into a civil war that threatens to engulf the Roman world once more. The play thus challenges the predominant cultural memories of peace fostered by the Julio-Claudian dynasty and promotes instead a counter-memory rooted in civil strife.

11. The Failure of Female Fides in the Octavia

Fides in Flavian Literature, 2019

A Tale of Two Waters

Campania in the Flavian Poetic Imagination, 2018

This chapter discusses the sharp distinction between the Flavian present and the Julio-Claudian p... more This chapter discusses the sharp distinction between the Flavian present and the Julio-Claudian past through an analysis of the pseudo-Senecan Octavia. Historical events no less than fiction provide scintillating material, especially the surviving historiographical accounts of Nero’s attempt to drown his mother Agrippina in the Bay of Naples and her subsequent murder which is poetically transformed in the variant versions of the tragedy in Martial 4.63 and the anonymous Octavia (309–76, 598–613): both exploit Nero’s reputation for attempting to control nature with aquatic engineering and a personified Campania’s loyalty to Agrippina rather than to her son. In the Octavia, the pathos of Agrippina struggling vainly against mountainous Campanian waves runs counter to Tacitus’ report of a calm sea, whereas Martial, who adheres to the historiographic account, cites the defiance of the waves in refusing to comply with the attempted murder.

Ingens as an Etymological Pun in the Octavia

Classical Philology, 2011

... AJP 112: 73–76. Kragelund, P. 1982. Prophecy, Populism, and Propaganda in the “Octavia.” Cope... more

Don’t Stand So Close to Me: Antigone’s Pietas in Seneca’s Phoenissae

Transactions of the American Philological Association, 2015

summary:&l... more summary:Seneca’s Phoenissae imbues Antigone’s canonical pietas with elegiac associations. Her appeals to her father recycle familiar topoi from amatory poetry, especially the amator’s pledge to follow (sequor) the beloved anywhere. Her father, in turn, is often disturbed by her physical proximity and attempts to escape further incestuous temptation (timeo post matrem omnia). In the end, however, Oedipus capitulates to his daughter’s elegiac rhetoric and responds to her in similarly amatory terms. In this way Seneca subverts the loyalty that defined Antigone in prior literary treatments to create the potential for an incestuous sequel to his earlier tragedy of Thebes.

VT et Hostem Amarem: Jocasta and the Poetics of Civil War in Seneca's Phoenissae

Ramus, 2017

Over the past two decades, scholars have devoted increasing attention to Roman civil war literatu... more Over the past two decades, scholars have devoted increasing attention to Roman civil war literature and its poetics, from the vocabulary of nefas, paradox, and hyperbole to the pervasive imagery of the state as a body violated by its citizens. Thebes and especially the civil war between Oedipus’ sons became prominent lenses through which Romans explored their country's strife-ridden past. Seneca's Phoenissae, however, has received comparatively little attention in this regard, often overshadowed by Statius’ epic Thebaid of the next generation. This paper investigates Seneca's contribution to the wider poetics of civil war through his expansion of the theme of incest, which Seneca uses to articulate civil war's most invasive, penetrative, and disintegrative effects. In particular, Seneca capitalizes on both the metaphorical potential of maternal violation and the eroticized imagery of Roman conquest to create disturbing points of contact between two generations of Joc...

Allusive Prodigia: Caesar's Comets in Neronian Rome (Tac. Ann. 15.47)

TAPA

Ginsberg - Caesar's Comets in Neronian Rome (Tac. Ann 15.47)

TAPA, 2020

Lauren Donovan Ginsberg

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