The Hunchback in Hellenistic and Roman Art

Description

The subject of deformity and disability in the ancient Greco-Roman world has experienced a surge in scholarship over the past two decades. Recognizing a vast, but relatively un(der)explored, corpus of evidence, scholars have sought to integrate the deformed and disabled body back into our understanding of ancient society and culture, art and representation. The Hunchback in Hellenistic and Roman Art works towards this end, using the figure of the hunchback to re-think and re-read images of the 'Other' as well as key issues that lie at the very heart of ancient representation. The author takes an art-historical approach, examining key features of the corpus of hunchbacks, as well as representations of the deformed and disabled more generally. This provides fertile ground for a re-assessment of current, and likewise marginalized, scholarship on the miniature in ancient art, hyperphallicism in ancient art, and the emphasis on the male body in ancient art.

Lisa Trentin is Lecturer in Classics in the Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada.

Trentin's catalogue and comprehensive, up-to-date bibliography constitute an important scholarly resource ... This is a book that intelligently advances debates about representations of disability and the Other. * Classics Ireland * Trentino's book makes its contribution to the historiography of disability by bringing together all representations of the hunchback known throughout Antiquity ... This book represents a remarkable work and it often develops interesting reflections on difficult matters. * Revue des etudes anciennes [Bloomsbury translation] * Perhaps nowhere is the fundamental strangeness of Hellenistic and Roman mindset more obvious than in the popularity of hunchback figures in art. Ugly-but-desirable, humorous-but-serious, pitiable-but-lucky, they reveal complex and seemingly contradictory attitudes towards physical deformity that cannot easily be mapped onto the modern. Lisa Trentin's book represents the only comprehensive treatment in English of hunchback figures, both male and female. It brings together a large catalogue of important material and thoughtful discussion in a single, accessible volume, and will be an important resource to scholars and students of ancient art and to historians of the human body. -- Jane Masseglia, Research Fellow: Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project (AshLI), University of Oxford, UK This is a thought-provoking analysis of a representational type which has long remained marginalized. The catalogue of fifty-five representations of hunchbacks is in itself an invaluable resource. -- Barbara Kellum, Professor of Art, Smith College, USA