W. Martin Bloomer – författare

These essays, written by eminent scholars from diverse disciplines and perspectives, consider various present-day and historical efforts to make a language dominant through textual, institutional, academic, and literary means. Contributors examine pressures to elevate one language at the expense of another and the cultural and intellectual consequences of that elevation. Specific essays apply this theme of the contest of language to the suppression, survival, and revival of the Irish language; to Greek, Latin, and the emergence of the vernacular in Europe; to the relationship between minority and dominant language in China; and to the lack of linguistic imperialism in the spread of Arabic, among other fascinating topics.

These essays, written by eminent scholars from diverse disciplines and perspectives, consider various present-day and historical efforts to make a language dominant through textual, institutional, academic, and literary means. Contributors examine pressures to elevate one language at the expense of another and the cultural and intellectual consequences of that elevation. Specific essays apply this theme of the contest of language to the suppression, survival, and revival of the Irish language; to Greek, Latin, and the emergence of the vernacular in Europe; to the relationship between minority and dominant language in China; and to the lack of linguistic imperialism in the spread of Arabic, among other fascinating topics.

This fascinating cultural and intellectual history focuses on education as practiced by the imperial age Romans, looking at what they considered the value of education and its effect on children. W. Martin Bloomer details the processes, exercises, claims, and contexts of liberal education from the late first century BCE to the third century CE - the epoch of rhetorical education. He examines the adaptation of Greek institutions, methods, and texts by the Romans, and traces the Romans' own history of education. Bloomer argues that while Rome's enduring educational legacy includes the seven liberal arts and a canon of school texts, its practice of competitive displays of reading, writing, and reciting were intended to instill in the young social as well as intellectual ideas.

This fascinating cultural and intellectual history focuses on education as practiced by the imperial age Romans, looking at what they considered the value of education and its effect on children. W. Martin Bloomer details the processes, exercises, claims, and contexts of liberal education from the late first century BCE to the third century CE--the epoch of rhetorical education. He examines the adaptation of Greek institutions, methods, and texts by the Romans, and traces the Romans' own history of education. Bloomer argues that while Rome's enduring educational legacy includes the seven liberal arts and a canon of school texts, its practice of competitive displays of reading, writing, and reciting were intended to instill in the young social as well as intellectual ideas.

Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Valerius Maximus's Memorable Deeds and Sayings was the most widely read prose after the Bible. Bloomer revives this classic text to examine how, why, and for whom Valerius composed this collection of rhetorical examples. He argues that the work expresses the concerns and anxieties of literate first-century Romans and shows that it creates paradigms for a new culture.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

For centuries after the fall of the Roman empire, the ability to write and speak pure Latin was the mark of the true scholar. But although such skill was esteemed in medieval times, the language of ancient Rome was as various as the styles of slaves and masters.Latinity and Literary Society at Rome reaches back to the early Roman empire to examine attitudes toward latinity, reviewing the contested origins of scholarly Latin in the polemical arena of Roman literature. W. Martin Bloomer shows how that literature's reflections on correct and incorrect speech functioned as part of a wider understanding of social relations and national identity in Rome.Bloomer's investigation begins with questions about the sociology of Latin literature-what interests were served by the creation of high style and how literary stylization constituted a system of social decorum-and goes on to offer readings of selected texts. Through studies of works ranging from Varro's De lingua latina to the verse fables of Augustine's freeman Phaedrus to the Annals of Tacitus, Bloomer examines conflicting claims to style not simply to set true Latin against vulgarism but also to ask who is excluding whom, why, and by what means.These texts exemplify the ways Roman literature employs representations of, and reflections on, proper and improper language to mirror the interests of specific groups who wished to maintain or establish their place in Roman society. They show how writers sought to influence the fundamental social issue of who had the power to confer legitimacy of speech and how their works used claims of linguistic propriety to reinforce the definition of "Romanness."Through Bloomer's study latinity emerges as a contested field of identity and social polemic heretofore unrecognized in classical scholarship. With its fresh interpretations of major and minor texts, Latinity and Literary Society at Rome is a literary history that significantly advances our understanding of the place of language in ancient Rome.

How Romans built their past—and made it speak.During the turbulent transition from Republic to Empire, Romans became intensely preoccupied with their own past. In Evoking the Dead, W. Martin Bloomer examines how memory was constructed, organized, and put to work in this moment of political uncertainty—and how literature became one of its most powerful instruments.Bloomer focuses on a group of authors writing in the late Republic and early Empire, including Cicero, Varro, Valerius Maximus, Seneca the Elder, and Velleius Paterculus. Rather than narrating history in conventional terms, these writers compiled books of memorable deeds, sayings, names, and words, assembling a usable past meant to stabilize Roman identity. Their works presented memory as something to be learned, curated, and repeated, offering readers a shared repertoire through which to understand citizenship, virtue, and authority. Bloomer shows how these "books of memory" transformed literature itself. By resurrecting figures from earlier Rome through rhetorical techniques that gave the dead a voice, authors claimed new cultural authority and redefined what counted as the Roman past. This process was selective and mutable, sustaining political regimes, social hierarchies, educational canons, and even personal identity, while quietly reshaping them.Attentive to language, rhetoric, and literary form, Evoking the Dead offers a fresh account of Roman memory-making as an active, contested practice rather than a passive inheritance. The book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of classics, Roman history, literary culture, and memory studies, and to readers interested in how societies use the past to authorize the present.