This book explores Roman love elegy from postcolonial perspectives, arguing that the tropes, conventions, and discourses of the Augustan genre serve to reinforce the imperial identity of its elite, metropolitan audience. Love elegy presents the phenomena and discourses of Roman imperialism—in terms of visual spectacle (the military triumph), literary genre (epic in relation to elegy), material culture (art and luxury goods), and geographic space—as intersecting with ancient norms of gender and sexuality in a way that reinforces Rome’s dominance in the Mediterranean. The introductory chapter lays out the postcolonial frame, drawing from the work of Edward Said among other theorists, and situates love elegy in relation to Roman Hellenism and the varied Roman responses to Greece and its cultural influences. Four of the six subsequent chapters focus on the rhetorical ambivalence that characterizes love elegy’s treatment of Greek influence: the representation of the domina or mistress as simultaneously a figure for ‘captive Greece’ and a trope for Roman imperialism; the motif of the elegiac triumph, with varying figures playing the triumphator, as suggestive of Greco-Roman cultural rivalry; Rome’s competing visions of an Attic and an Asiatic Hellenism. The second and the final chapter focus on the figures of Osiris and Isis, respectively, as emblematic of Rome’s colonialist and ambivalent representation of Egypt, with the conclusion offering a deconstructive reading of elegy’s rhetoric of orientalism.
Provides the necessary context to read elegiac and lyric poetry, designed for novice and experienced Classics and Latin students alike A Guide to Latin Elegy and Lyric explores the language of Latin poetry while helping readers understand the socio-cultural context of the remarkable period of Roman literary history in which the poetry was composed. With an innovative approach to this important area of classical scholarship, the authors treat elegy alongside lyric as they cover topics such as the Hellenistic influences on Augustan poetry, the key figures that shaped the elegiac tradition of Rome, the motifs of militia amoris ("the warfare of love") and servitium amoris (“the slavery of love”) in Latin love elegy, and more. Organized into ten chapters, the book begins with an introduction to the literary, political, and social contexts of the Augustan Age. The next six chapters each focus on an individual lyric and elegiac poet—Catullus, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, and Sulpicia—followed by a survey of several lesser-known poets and post-Augustan elegy and lyric. The text concludes with a discussion of major tropes and themes in Latin elegy and lyric, and an overview and analysis of key critical approaches in current scholarship. This volume: Includes full translations alongside the Latin throughout the text to illustrate discussions Analyzes recurring themes and tropes found in Latin poetry such as sexuality and gender, politics and patronage, myth and religion, wealth and poverty, empire, madness, magic, and witchcraft Reviews modern critical approaches to elegiac and lyric poetry including autobiographical realism, psychoanalysis, narratology, reception, and decolonization Includes helpful introductory sections: "How to Read a Latin Elegiac or Lyric Poem" and "How to Teach a Latin Elegiac and Lyric Poem" Provides information about each poet, an in-depth discussion of some of their poetry, and cultural and historical background Features a dedicated chapter on Sulpicia, offering readers an ancient female viewpoint on sex and gender, politics, and patronage Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Guides to Classical Literature series, A Guide to Latin Elegy and Lyric is the perfect text for both introductory and advanced courses in Latin elegy and lyric, accessible for students reading the poetry in translation, as well as for those experienced in Latin with an interest in learning a different approach to the subject.
A Companion to Roman Love Elegy is the first comprehensive work dedicated solely to the study of love elegy. The genre is explored through 33 original essays thatoffer new and innovative approaches to specific elegists and the discipline as a whole. Contributors represent a range of established names and younger scholars, all of whom are respected experts in their fields Contains original, never before published essays, which are both accessible to a wide audience and offer a new approach to the love elegists and their work Includes 33 essays on the Roman elegists Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Sulpicia, and Ovid, as well as their Greek and Roman predecessors and later writers who were influenced by their work Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in Roman elegy from scholars who have used a variety of critical approaches to open up new avenues of understanding
Propertius' Cynthia considers Propertius' metapoetic and intra- and intertextual habits and their relationship with the repetitious amatory discourse that he fashions for himself with his beloved, Cynthia. Where scholarship tends to treat as separate the metaliterary and the amatory aspects of Propertius' poetry, this volume - focussed on Books 3 and 4 - argues that his discussion of his own poetry and of his relationship to it as an author-figure - his metapoetic commentary - is closely married to, and can be clearly mapped onto, his account of his relationship with Cynthia, especially in Books 1-3. Moreover, it demonstrates that the amorous discourse the elegist fashions is constituted of a poetics of repetitiousness that is apt for the articulation of an elegiac relationship that, by its nature, cannot progress. The encounters between Propertius and Cynthia are repetitive, and the poet mirrors these in his recollection of lexical and thematic aspects of earlier poems in later ones. Each poem provides a fragmentary glance at Propertius' relationship and, through repetitions with variation, the elegist shapes his readers' understanding of his amatory discourse. Furthermore, it is argued that, since his beloved is the embodiment of his poetry, Propertius' account of his changing relationship with her allows him to articulate the transformations of his elegiac corpus; this becomes most significant as the close of Book 3 appears to end their relationship and he begins a radical experimentation with the generic bounds of elegy that is expanded in Book 4, where the polyvalent Vertumnus embodies the poet's work.
In Propertius: Poet of Love and Leisure, Alison Keith explores Propertius' elegiac poetry in the context of early imperial Roman society. Examining a variety of themes associated with both Propertian poetics (such genre theory, poetic models, the girlfriend, the rival) and the poet's social context within the early Augustan principate (such as Roman imperialism, the elite male cursus honorum, Augustus' building projects) she offers a synthetic overview of Propertius' achievement in his four books of elegies. She considers the neglected relationship of rhetoric to Propertian elegiac poetics, as well as Propertius' debt to the classical literary tradition, and she explores themes in the corpus that reflect the Augustan imperial context in which Propertius lived and wrote. Arguing for neither a pro- nor an anti-Augustanism on display in Propertian elegy, Keith brings to light the multiple ways in which Roman imperial rule, the new pax Augusta, and new forms of elite Roman political competition intersect in and inform Propertius' poetry. The volume aims to contribute to our understanding of both Latin literature and Augustan culture its sustained exploration of refractions of the Roman 'imperialist enterprise' in Propertius' elegiac poetry.
The passions were a topic of widespread interest in antiquity, as has been shown by the recent interest and research in the emotions in Greek and Roman literature. Until now, however, there has been very little focus on love elegy or its relation to contemporary philosophical positions. Yet Roman love elegy depends crucially upon the passions: without love, anger, jealousy, pity, and fear, elegy could not exist at all. The Elegiac Passion provides the first investigation of the ancient representation of jealousy in its Roman context, as well as its significance for Roman love elegy itself. The poems of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid are built upon the presumed existence of a love triangle involving poet, mistress, and rival: the very structure of elegy thus creates an ideal scenario for the arousal of jealousy. This study begins by examining the differences between the elegiac treatment of love and that of philosophy, whether Stoic or Epicurean. Ruth Caston uses the main chapters to address the depiction of jealousy in the love relationship and explores in detail the role of the senses, the role of readers--both those internal and external to the poems--, and the use of violence as a response to jealousy. Elegy provides a multi-faceted perspective on jealousy that gives us details and nuances of the experience of jealousy not found elsewhere in ancient literature. She argues that jealousy turns centrally on the question of fides. The fear of broken obligations and the consequent lack of trust are relevant not only to the love affair that forms the subject of these poems but to many other relationships represented in elegy as well. Overall, she demonstrates that jealousy is not merely the subject matter of elegy: it creates and structures elegy's various generic features. Jealousy thus provides a much more satisfying explanation for the specific character of Roman elegy than the various theories about its origins that have typically been put forward.
I hate and I love.' The Roman poet Catullus expressed the disorienting experience of being in love in a stark contradiction that has resonated across the centuries. While his description might seem to modern readers natural and spontaneous, it is actually a response planned with great care and artistry. It is that artistry, and the way in which Roman love poetry works, that this book explores. Focusing on Catullus and on the later genre of elegy - so-called for its metre, and a form of poetry practiced by Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid - Denise Eileen McCoskey and Zara Martirosova Torlone discuss the devices used by the major Roman love poets, as well as the literary and historical contexts that helped shape their work. Setting poets and their writings especially against the turbulent backdrop of the Augustan Age (31 BCE-14 CE), the book examines the origins of Latin elegy; highlights the poets' key themes; and traces their reception by later writers and readers.
The Roman elegiac poet Propertius was one such author. This final published collection, issued in 16 BCE, has been traditionally read as an abandonment by Propertius of his earlier flippant love poems for a more mature engagement with Roman public life or else a comical send-up of imperial policies as embodied in Rome's public buildings. The Elegiac Cityscape explores Propertius' Rome and the various ways his poetry about the city illuminates the dynamic relationship between one individual and his environment. The relationship between poet and city is complicated at every turn by the presence in the background of the emperor Augustus, whose sustained artistic patronage of Roman monuments brought about the most pervasive transformation that the city had yet seen. Combining the approaches of archaeology and literary criticism, Tara S. Welch examines how Propertius' poems on Roman places scrutinize the monumentalization of various ideological positions in Rome, as they poke and prod Rome's monuments to see what further meanings they might admit. The result is a poetic book rife with different perspectives on the eternal city, perspectives that often call into question any sleepy or complacent adherence to Rome's traditional values. Book jacket.