Xiyuan Meng

Xiyuan is a fourth year DPhil candidate from the School of Classics. Before moving to Scotland, she received her BA degree from Peking University (2015-2020) where she read Arabic and subsequently Classics. She received her MLitt degree from the University of St Andrews (2020-2021, with distinction) and later spent a year working at the Bodleian KB Chen China Centre Library, University of Oxford.

Golden age is perennial in Latin poetry, and it also avails ancient authors with a way to view their own times or to prospect the near future. Rather than merely confining to what is written under this theme, it is equally important to understand how and why golden age is written, as there are always political or social agenda closely associated with this peculiar literary tradition. Given such context, my DPhil thesis, entitled The Nostalgic Palimpsests: Golden Age and its Intricacies in Latin Poetry from the Late Republic to Early Empire, investigates the literary representation of golden age through close reading of individual authors and situates it within the constellation of the wider political and cultural discourses. The broader question which I ambition to answer is why golden age is especially common amongst the authors in the Late Republic and the early Augustan era. My discussion in this thesis falls in three main critical categories: golden age as a topos, as a tradition, and as a discourse. With such foci, this research brings together the discussion of golden age on both micro and macro levels. By closely examining the syntactical and stylistic features in individual late republican authors (Catullus and Lucretius) and those in early empire (Vergil, Horace, Tibullus, and Ovid), this research explores the employment of different temporal frameworks—for instance, mythic, universal, and historical-political—and how the linearity-circularity contrast forms a crucial way of representing temporalities under the golden age tradition from a narratological perspective. More broadly, this research illustrates the intertextuality between Latin authors who wrote on golden age and extends the thematic horizon to the interaction between the golden age discourse and other cultural or social discourses in this period, eg: primitivity, crisis/apocalypse, and social progress. Alongside my main interest in Latin poetry, I am also interested in translation and classical reception in modern and contemporary China (esp theatre and literature).

Some of my side projects will be soon coming out as conference chapters, including: (1) clementia in Cicero's Pro Marcello, with a special focus on the relationship between praise and reconciliation; (2) the reception of the myth of the ages in Assassin's Creed Odyssey: The Fate of Atlantis; and (3) a parallel reading on apocalypse in Lucretius and Horace. (cross-reference my conference papers below) Alongside these projects, I am also working on an article on the gendered expression/imagery of progress.

Within the School of Classics

• CL1005 Images of Augustan Rome (23-24 S2): tutorials
• GK2004/5004 The Landscape of Greek Poetry (B) (23-24 S2): set-text language support
• LT1001 Elementary Latin 1 (24-25 S1): lectures
• LT2002/2004/3018/5004 Latin Language and Literature 2 (24-25 S2): unseens
• ID1007 Ancient Origins, Modern Worlds (25-26 S2): tutorials

Centre for Educational Enhancement and Development (CEED)

• ASP Workshop: Introduction to Essay Writing (23-24 S1)
• ASP Workshop: How to Ace in Exams (23-24 S2)
• ASP Workshop: How to Use Commentaries: A Brief Practical Guide (24-25 S1)