The Modern Cultural Myth of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media)

This book investigates the ‘decline and fall’ of Rome as perceived and imagined in aspects of British and American culture and thought from the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries. It explores the ways in which writers, filmmakers and the media have conceptualized this process and the parallels they have drawn, deliberately or unconsciously, to their contemporary world. Jonathan Theodore argues that the decline and fall of Rome is no straightforward historical fact, but a ‘myth’ in terms coined by Claude Lévi-Strauss, meaning not a ‘falsehood’ but a complex social and ideological construct. Instead, it represents the fears of European and American thinkers as they confront the perceived instability and pitfalls of the civilization to which they belonged. The material gathered in this book illustrates the value of this idea as a spatiotemporal __concept__, rather than a __historical__ event – a narrative with its own unique moral purpose. "For this study, I am investigating the "decline and fall" of Rome, as represented in British and American culture and thought, from the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries. It is my argument that the "decline and fall" of Rome is no straightforward historical fact, but a "myth" in the academic sense coined by Claude Levi-Strauss, meaning not a "falsehood" but a complex social and ideological construct. It represents the fears of European and American thinkers as they confront the perceived instability and pitfalls of the civilization to which they belonged. The material I have gathered illustrates the value of the decline and fall as a spatiotemporal concept, rather than a historical event - even when most of its popular and intellectual representations characterises it as such. I am therefore inquiring into the ways in which writers, filmmakers and the media have conceptualized this "decline"; and the parallels they have drawn, deliberately or unconsciously, with their contemporary world. My work fits into a broader collection of studies examining the continuing impact of the Greco-Roman heritage on our cultural and ideological horizons. However, though the representation of antiquity is a fast-growing field of scholarly inquiry, the theme of this project has been little examined. I am critical of the standard model of the "sociology of representation" in history, which holds that such media is almost exclusively a vehicle to articulate contemporary concerns, and which omits the recurring role of deeper, underlying historical and cultural narratives. When I consider the "decline and fall," it instead becomes apparent how the present is adapted to fit the enduring tropes of the past "--Abstract Abstract 6 Acknowledgements 8 Contents 10 Chapter 1: Introduction 12 Representation and Myth 12 Hermeneutics and Historical Consciousness 15 Antiquity, Past and Present 19 Methodology 24 Notes 27 Chapter 2: Historiography, Myth and Visual Culture 31 The Fall of the Western Roman Empire and Its Modern Historiography 31 The Decline and Fall as an Atypical Model of Myth 44 Myth as Interdisciplinary Study 49 Theories of Myth 51 Historiography, Myth and Literature 61 Historical “Consciousness” and Narrative 62 Classics and the Vernacular 67 Film and a Consciousness of Antiquity 73 Truth and Accuracy in Historical Cinema 75 Notes 78 Chapter 3: The Fall of Rome and Ideas of Decline 93 The Tradition of Decline 93 Gibbon’s Decline and Fall 100 Gibbon and Concepts of Decadence 110 Notes 113 Chapter 4: Roman Decline and the West in the Modern Age 122 Rome and Reflections on Twentieth-Century Society 122 Roman Narratives and the Cold War 130 Mann, Hollywood, and Historical “Truth” 135 The Fall and Contemporary Discourses of Empire 148 Notes 151 Chapter 5: Decadence, Imperialism, and Decline from the Late Twentieth Century 160 Mass Culture and Its Critics 160 Gladiator, Rome, and the USA in ad 2000 170 9/11 and Critics of Empire 179 Cinema and the Decline and Fall in the New Millennium 186 Rome, Civilization, and the Modern Age 193 Notes 195 Chapter 6: Conclusion 204 Notes 208 Bibliography 209 Classical and Medieval Texts in Translation and Latin 209 Pre-twentieth Century Literature 210 Modern Works 211 Filmography 229 Index 231 This volume investigates the 'decline and fall' of Rome as perceived and imagined in aspects of British and American culture and thought from the late 19th through the early 21st centuries. It explores the ways in which writers, filmmakers and the media have conceptualized this process and the parallels they have drawn, deliberately or unconsciously, to their contemporary world Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-19 Historiography, Myth and Visual Culture....Pages 21-82 The Fall of Rome and Ideas of Decline....Pages 83-111 Roman Decline and the West in the Modern Age....Pages 113-150 Decadence, Imperialism, and Decline from the Late Twentieth Century....Pages 151-194 Conclusion....Pages 195-199 Back Matter....Pages 201-228 Jonathan Theodore. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.