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This chapter explores the character Hannibal in Silius' Punica. It argues that it is Hannibal's compelling, meta-poetic, absent-presence in Scipio's triumphal parade that asserts his power over Silius' epic. If the play of textual temporality, and of aperture and closure, in the Liternum episode serves to re-emphasize that the Punica is a tale told by a Roman victor, it also illustrates not only the openness of the poem to a Punic point of view, but, more broadly, Silius' limited power, as Roman epicist, over openings and closings. His poetic celebration of Roman victory, or victories, cannot altogether control its portrayal of Rome's greatest enemy, nor the problematic lapse between Roman past and present, nor, indeed, how, or how much of, the Punica will be read.

This chapter describes Mark Twain's Hannibal, the physical setting of his most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huck Finn, and his inspiration for countless others. Hannibal is the place where Twain grew up, where he shared the experiences of his two famous characters, Tom and Huck. Twain considered the town as a microcosm of America, living proof of its guilt and shame, and triumph and achievements. The chapter, using experiences while travelling to and within Hannibal, then traces the history of John Berry Meachum, a prominent slave turned free black reformist in neighboring St. Louis, Missouri, as a prologue to a discussion on slavery in the South, and its manifestations in Twain's hometown. The chapter describes the town as a tourism hotspot for Twain fans and relates her conversations with contemporary town members of their views on Twain's philosophy and works.

The chapter recounts Mark Twain's lifelong battle with the ghost of slavery, racism, and his efforts, through his writings, to make his fellow citizens aware of and perhaps change their attitudes on the social blight. The chapter begins with the case of one Johnson Whittaker, the first black to enter Westpoint, who was subsequently expelled through racist acts in the late 19th century. This event helped shape Mark Twain from being ordinary Samuel Clemens of Hannibal to the insightful, socially-responsible author that he became. The chapter then traces the roots of and factors affecting this gradual transformation, including references to courageous former slaves whose stories further fueled Twain's burgeoning outrage for racism. In the last few sections, the chapter then juxtaposes Twain's social awakening to the experiences of her modern-day students, which serves to introduce the main topic of the following chapter.

This concluding chapter provides a final overview of the Roman Hannibal and his portrayal in SiliusItalicus’ Punica. As well as providing a conclusive discussion on how Silius’ Hannibal is a man who undergoes a process of decline after Cannae whilst his status as a super-uir continues to evolve, this chapter returns to the final appearance of Hannibal above the plains of Zama. It is noted that in referring to his legacy, Hannibal does not say that his nomen(name)will survive, but his nomina (‘names’). It is argued that with this use of the plural form, there is a subtle nod to the multiple ‘Hannibals’ that exist in Silius’ Punica as well to the different ways in which he is remembered and perceived in Rome's literature.

This chapter addresses the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001). Both the colour palette and the tone of the new film were different from its predecessor, with a greater emphasis on primary colours and atmospheric chiaroscuro effects, and the material's black humour more accentuated. In keeping with the director's expertise in the realm of the epic, Hannibal was placed within a much more geographically sprawling canvas, with a great deal of the film shot in a beautifully evoked Florence, the city in which Hannibal Lecter is masquerading as the expert in Renaissance art, ‘Dr Fell’. Ridley Scott's assumption of the directorial reins proved highly successful and the film enjoyed immense popularity, breaking several box office records as it wittily opened on Valentine's Day of 2001. If the talented Julianne Moore was able to do less with the character of Clarice Starling than her predecessor, this was perhaps due to the extra level of confidence the FBI agent has acquired by this stage of her life. Professional though the actress's work was throughout, neither she nor her director could produce the kind of touching verisimilitude that was Jodie Foster's stock-in-trade in the first film. The chapter then looks at the prequels: Brett Ratner's Red Dragon (2002) and Peter Webber's Hannibal Rising (2007).

This chapter focuses on those texts, written before SiliusItalicus’ Punica, which feature Hannibal. These texts include the (extremely) fragmentary works of Hannibal's own historians Silenus and Sosylus, as well as the works of Cicero, Cornelius Nepos, Horace, Valerius Maximus and Seneca. Special attention is paid to Polybius’ Histories, which – although written in Greek – are aimed in part at a Roman audience and contain a detailed account of the Carthaginian's life. By examining the portrayal of Hannibal in these texts, it is argued that a picture of the ‘Roman Hannibal’ emerges which shows how the Carthaginian became celebrated in Rome as much for his military acumen as for his supposed cruelty.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how Thomas Harris's novels Red Dragon (published 1981) and The Silence of the Lambs (1988) represented a double whammy that permanently reconfigured the crime fiction genre (and, as a by-product, the entire field of horror fiction). Harris has long since gone beyond being merely a topflight writer: he is now a brand, and his sanguinary serial killer novels are the defining works of the genre. The subsequent successful films of the books performed a concomitant shift in popular crime/horror cinema. Jonathan Demme's film, in particular, inaugurated a change in thriller cinema. The real success of the movie lies in the casting of Jodie Foster, impeccably incarnating the out-of-her-depth Clarice Starling, and Anthony Hopkins, masterly as the urbane Hannibal Lecter. Above all, the film (like the novel) is intelligent, a sharp contrast to most contemporary Hollywood fare.

This chapter discusses the other serial killers in the cinema before Hannibal Lecter. In 1959, the writer Robert Bloch was inspired by the gruesome case of the Wisconsin mass murderer Ed Gein, with his keepsakes of bones and human skin. He transmuted elements of the Gein case into the phenomenally successful Psycho (published 1959), reconfiguring the real-life Gein as the chubby, unprepossessing mother's boy Norman Bates, who dispatches a variety of victims in gruesome fashion. Subsequently, Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of the novel (1960) laid down the parameters for a variety of genres: the serial killer movie, the slasher film, and the modern big-budget horror film which utilises above-the-title stars rather than the journeyman actors who had populated such fare previously. But above all else, Hitchcock and his talented screenwriter Joseph Stefano created a template for the intelligent, richly developed, and charismatic fictional serial killer in their version of Norman Bates. Hitchcock's film was to influence a generation of film-makers and writers; among them Thomas Harris.

This chapter explores the legacy of The Silence of the Lambs. What is the most significant aspect of Thomas Harris's achievement, both on the page and on the screen? Certainly, there is the creation of a massively successful franchise which has proved itself to be both durable and renewable; the latest incarnation of Harris's signature character is a television series, Hannibal, with the British actor Hugh Dancy impressively nervous as Will Graham, and the Scandinavian Mads Mikkelsen as Harris's eponymous psychiatrist. What is perhaps most enduring about the legacy of The Silence of the Lambs and the writer's other books is the permanent change that malign screen characters have undergone since the appearance of Dr Lecter in the bowels of that psychiatric institution. Nowadays, most ambitious thrillers imbue their villains with a fierce intelligence and analytical intuitiveness. But even more important than this, Thomas Harris demonstrated that popular writing can boast the acumen, elegance, and masterly prose of the best literary fiction, and has inter alia raised the game of the whole genre of thriller writing. Similarly, Jonathan Demme's place in film history is assured thanks to his confident handling of the source material and its influence on horror cinema of the late twentieth century.

The two years immediately preceding the War of the Rebellion were teeming with unprecedented events. Almost every question of public interest was directly or indirectly connected with one phase or another of the slavery problem. Thirty years of vigorous anti-slavery agitation had forced men into or out of parties; had made them declare for the restriction or extension of slavery—its nationalization or extinction. Two great political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, were confronting each other on the vital question—Freedom national and slavery sectional. On November, 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin were elected as president and vice-president of America. Unfortunately, the South regarded Lincoln's election as a casus belli. The wildest confusion and disgust prevailed at the South, while the North hailed the result as friendly to the country. The War of the Rebellion was formally opened by the South; and on April, 15, 1861, Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 troops. Neither the South nor the North admitted Negroes into the army.

This chapter draws heavily on the misadventures of the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, from Ridley Scott's film Hannibal. Reflecting the hunger of American audiences for the further misadventures of Hannibal Lecter, took this film to a record-breaking $58,000,000 on its opening weekend in the United States. Such massive public interest in Lecter had of course begun with his appearance in Thomas Harris's best-selling novels Red Dragon (1981), The Silence of the Lambs (1988) and Hannibal (1999). This chapter further illustrates that the iconic Lecter's true significance lay in the ways he allowed contemporary audiences to engage psychologically and socio-culturally with the historic traumas of the Reagan years while exposing the ideological mediation of that trauma by all aspects of the culture industry. The violent murderer has been a recurrent figure in the mass cultural imagination of the United States since the earliest days of the republic. He has come to the forefront of the popular imagination at times of political, social or economic dislocation; and his outrageous deeds and fantasies have allowed for a timely re-examination of one of the core paradoxes of American social life.

This chapter provides the Latin text and a literal translation into English of the section on prayers for military glory in Juvenal’s tenth satire and a detailed critical appreciation of those lines (133-187), paying particular attention to poetic aspects such as sound, style, rhythm, diction, imagery, vividness and narrative technique, and also assessing humour, wit, irony and the force and validity of the satirical thrusts. Questions of text are considered as well, where they are of substantial importance. In this section of the poem Juvenal presents a much more comprehensive assault on the object of prayer, using three examples (Hannibal, Alexander and Xerxes). This is a vigorous and entertaining treatment, with much ridicule of the three commanders. The poet portrays the desire for glory as destructive (to others), excessive (in the case of Hannibal and Alexander) and pointless.

This chapter examines the character of Hannibal Lecter. Thomas Harris makes it quickly apparent that Lecter is unlike most other fictional monsters we have encountered: he is well-read, charismatic, and immensely polite. In fact, politeness is one of the key components of his baleful personality: those he considers ‘impolite’ he kills. His prey are frequently other killers, monsters who, unlike himself, are mere murderers, without his ‘redeeming’ features such as a high IQ, impressive culinary skills, and an expert knowledge of Italian Renaissance art. Indeed, one of Harris's signal achievements is the establishment of the character's unacknowledged mauvais foi — the monumental, smug self-deception he practices to maintain a lofty distance between himself and those he considers to be ordinary killers, or worse, ordinary killers who lack manners. The chapter then looks at Lecter's screen debut in the film Manhunter (1986). It also considers the influence of the Italian genre of the stylish murder thriller, the giallo, on the films made of Harris's work.

This chapter focuses on Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The synthesis of elements that create the look and identity of a film come from a variety of talents: from the director's original conception, to the cinematographer's realisation of the same; to the production designer. In the case of The Silence of the Lambs, these three elements are in perfect harmony, producing a visual signature for the film which is highly distinctive and very specific to Demme's vision. The chapter then details the first meeting and the subsequent interviews between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling. The initial meeting between Clarice and the murderous psychiatrist Lecter is one of the great set pieces of modern cinema. While clearly adhering to the imperatives of popular cinema, the sequence is shot and acted with a rigour worthy of the ‘chamber cinema’ of the Swedish master Ingmar Bergman in his late 1960s films — and this is not the only occasion in which the more rarefied agendas of art cinema are evoked by Demme and his collaborators. Another popular sequence is a perfect concatenation of all three elements of acting, writing, and direction, in which Lecter makes his devastating (and cruel) character analysis of Clarice. The chapter also explores the horror film credentials and accoutrements of the film.

This chapter assesses how Jonathan Demme's adaptation brought about a seismic change in the horror film genre of the 1990s; it performed a similar function for the crime narrative. The acclaim that the film enjoyed, both critically and commercially, was unprecedented. Particularly noteworthy was the recognition from the staid, conservative members of AMPASS, the industry body whose membership is responsible for bestowing the Academy Awards. It would be easy to say that these wins were exclusively due to the exemplary film-making on display in the film, but not quite accurate — such an impressive use of the medium as was evident would not alone have seduced the conservative Academy members, given the disreputable nature of the horror medium. One factor dictating this sea change in terms of Oscar recognition was the contribution of the actor Anthony Hopkins. Ultimately, what elevates The Silence of the Lambs above its cinematic predecessor is the balancing of the two principal (interlocking) plots: the pursuit and capture of the serial killer Buffalo Bill, and the growing uneasy relationship between the monk-like Hannibal Lecter and his novice ‘pupil’ Clarice Starling.

This chapter reflects on the figure of the hyper-intelligent serial killer. The influence of the film of The Silence of the Lambs on the horror (and thriller) genre has been considerable, not just on individual films, but in terms of broadening the parameters audiences have come to expect — both in terms of material that might fundamentally disturb, but also in raising the bar for an intelligent approach to genre material. The sophistication of the Hannibal Lecter character might be said to be a metaphor for the extra levels of nuance which became the norm for the most accomplished entries in the field — no longer were rudimentary characterisations of the heroes and villains of such films the yardstick, or even a straightforwardly Manichean attitude to notions of good and evil. A more ambitious and richly textured approach became the norm. Thomas Harris's character — in screen terms at least — survived in a handful of films that matched impeccable writing and direction with some truly idiosyncratic and offkilter playing, two of them directed by the talented David Fincher. The chapter then studies Fincher's Se7en (1995) and Zodiac (2007).