The Poems of Catullus describes the lifestyle of the Latin poet Catullus, his friends, and his lover, Lesbia. Catullus writes about each of his subjects in tones unique to them. With wild stories of the trouble and comradery shared by his friends, Catullus provides insight on more scandalous aspects of high society Roman culture. However, Catullus’ most shocking and compelling subject is his lover, Lesbia, the wife of an aristocrat. The two share a secret and sensual love, taboo not just because of the infidelity, but because Lesbia is many years older than Catullus. Throughout his poems, Catullus depicts their complicated relationship, first in a tender, lustful way, detailing their affairs, then gradually becomes more heated with angst and confusion. In his exploration of their relationship, Catullus embodies the possibility of simultaneously loving and hating someone. With vivid emotion and imagery, The Poems of Catullus provide a clear picture of the poet, his friends, and his lover and invoke a strong impression on its audience. Because of the deep emotions infused with each word and the visceral depictions of ancient Roman life, this collection of poetry is relatable to a modern-day audience, and is an essential educational source. Catullus paved the way and inspired change in the art of poetry, influencing countless poets and poetry styles. The Poems of Catullus also helped create the idea of poetry as a profession. The Poems of Catullus serves a valuable and educational source, enlightening audiences on the culture of the upper-class of the late Roman Republic. However, because Catullus also explores the complex human emotions regarding friendship, sex, and love, The Poems of Catullus have proven to be a timeless testament to the duality of humankind, embracing emotions that lie between the extremes in the spectrum of feeling. Catering to a contemporary audience, this edition of The Poems of Catullus features a new, eye-catching cover design and is reprinted in a modern font to accompany the timeless exploration of human emotion and the humorous, exciting life events of the influential poet Catullus.
The most popular of the Roman poets, Catullus is known for the accessibility of his witty and erotic love poems. In this book Charles Martin, himself a poet, offers a deeper reading of Catullus, revealing the art and intelligence behind the seemingly spontaneous verse. Martin considers Catullus's life, habits of composition, and the circumstances in which he worked. He places him among the modernists of his age, who created a new ironic and subjective poetics, and he shows the affinity between Catullus and the modernists of our own age. Martin offers original interpretations of Catullus's poems, viewing the love poems to "Lesbia" as a unified, artfully arranged poetic sequence, and the short poems, often dismissed as unworthy of serious critical attention, as the irreverent products of a sophisticated poetic innovator. Unlike Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, Catullus did not influence our literary culture until the beginning of the modern era, but he is now regarded as a poet who speaks to our age with a singular directness. Pointing to Catullus's self-awareness, playfulness, and comic invention and to the elaborate complexity of his experiments in poetic form, Martin gives both the scholar and the general reader a fresh appreciation of his poetic art.
Catullus, who lived from about 84 to 54 BC, was one of ancient Rome's most gifted, versatile and passionate poets. Living at a time of radical social change at the end of the Roman Republic, he belonged to a group of young poets who embraced Hellenistic forms to forge a new literary style, the so-called 'neoterics'. This comprehensive edition includes the complete, unabridged and unbowdlerised poems and is the definitive student edition of Catullus' work. The extensive introduction covers topics including the role of Catullus' literary paramour Lesbia, the few biographical certainties known about Catullus' life and other figures from the contemporary political scene. In addition to this, there is a brief overview of the poems' textual history, discussion of Catullus' style across the collection and linguistic discussions of morphology, vocabulary, syntax and metre. The commentary notes include individual introductions and bibliographies to each poem, as well as line by line notes which translate difficult phrases and gloss obscure words. In addition to this, more detailed explanations of poetic, structural and contextual points are also provided.
Of all the Roman poets Catullus is the most accessible for the modern reader. His poems range from the sublimely beautiful to the scatologically disgusting, from the world of heroic epic poetry to the dirt of the Roman streets. This accessible book, which assumes no prior knowledge of the poet or of Roman poetry in general, explores Catullus in all his many guises. In six concise chapters Godwin deals with the cultural background to Catullus' poetic production, its literary context, the role of love, Alexandrian learning and obscenity and, in the final chapter, considers the coherence and rationale of the collection as a whole.Each chapter is illustrated by readings of a number of poems, chosen to give a representative overview of Catullus' poetry. All quotations from the text are translated and a brief discursive section of 'Further Reading' is provided at the end of each chapter. A Timeline giving dates of authors mentioned and full bibliography is also supplied.
Gaius Valerius Catullus is one of Rome's greatest surviving poets and also one of the most popular Latin authors. Comprehensive treatments of his work have been hindered, however, by the problems posed by the Catutllan collection as it has come down to us. Although many scholars now believe that Catullus did publish his verse in one or more small volumes (libelli), the theory that these books were rearranged after his death means that individual pieces continue to be read and analyzed separately, without reference to their placement within the collection. Skinner challenges this theory of posthumous editorship by offering a unified reading of Catullus' elegiac poetry (poems 65-116 in our collection) and arguing that it constitutes what was once a separately circulated libellus whose authorial arrangement has been preserved intact. Purportedly issued from the poet's native city, Verona, to his Roman readership, the volume presents itself as a valedictory. This reading of the elegiac collection represents a major departure in Catullan studies. The methodological contention that Catullus' elegiac poems are better approached as a single cohesive poetic statement makes this book a valuable new contribution to Catullan scholarship.
"Peter Green is an outstanding translator. The reader’s excited anticipation of pleasure and instruction on receiving a new translation of a Latin poet by Green is not disappointed. This is a labor of love which makes Catullus accessible to the Latinless reader and more familiar to those who can read Latin."—Susan Treggiari, Stanford University "For almost half a century Peter Green has been one of the finest of all modern translators of classical verse. His Catullus is well up to his usual form—recapturing for a contemporary audience the wit, malice, erudition and erotic charm of the Latin original."—Mary Beard, author of The Parthenon
In these new verse translations, Martin makes newly accessible the work of one of ancient Rome's most widely read poets who wrote about the life and language of the people in the streets. (Poetry)
Presents a facsimilie of a book the author created after the death of her brother, and includes poetry, family photographs, letters, and sketches that deal with coming to terms with the loss.