The origin and development of continuous narrative in Roman art, 300 B.C.--A.D. 200

The dissertation investigates the continuous narrative format in Roman art, exploring its origins in art of the ancient Mediterranean and discussing developments in the interdisciplinary context of Roman culture and society. Although individual examples of continuous narrative have been extensively studied, no synthesis to date has related the various artifacts as members of a distinct genre or attempted to situate such a genre as the product of Roman societal, cultural and intellectual developments. The study provides a novel approach to both Roman narratology and the investigation of message transmission between ancient artists and their audience.;Continuous narrative is one of the rare genres of Roman art for which there are few Greek antecedents. A consensus exists that the format advanced considerably in the Roman era, in directions that went substantially beyond extant Greek examples. The study addresses reasons for the popularity of the style in Roman art and investigates specific developments it underwent in Roman hands, situating these developments in the context of Roman society and culture.;Topics addressed in Part I of the dissertation include: The origin and antecedents of Roman continuous narrative; Roman social structures and beliefs that influenced narrative art; Roman attitudes to Greek culture and their effect on cultural production; and the influence of other aesthetic and intellectual disciplines on the content and style of Roman visual narrative. Part II is devoted to the examination of individual examples of continuous narrative in Roman art, including public relief sculpture, funerary commemorations and paintings from a domestic context.;The study concludes that major Roman innovations in continuous narration include the development of extensive landscape backgrounds and the invention of the panel type of continuous narration. This new continuous format introduced the deliberate inconsistencies in size and perspective that became a feature of visual narratives of the Imperial period. The popularity of continuous narration in Roman art is correlated with a proclivity for telling complex stories as completely as possible, combined with a willingness to sacrifice the rational, realistic representation of space and time, subordinating such considerations to viewer reception and impartation of a desired message to an audience.