The Class Summary for Catullus and the Roman Elegiac Poets (Latin Love Elegy)



A Roman period wax tablet and styluses

This course will examine the origins and survey the evolution of Latin love elegy, with initial, special attention to the work and influence of the Poet Catullus (ca. 84-54 B.C.). We will look at some statements in ancient authors about the following:

• Roman achievement in elegy by Quintilian
• Representational practices of the Roman elegists by Apuleius
• First efforts at writing Latin elegy by Aulus Gellius

We will also read elegiac poems by Ennius, Ovid, and the future emperor Augustus, poems by an unknown author about the Scipio family, and poems ABOUT Augustus. (Caesar Augustus wrote poetry? Oh please, please let some historian somewhere find George Washington's sketchbook of limericks.)

Several issues impacted Roman elegy and these will figure in the scholarship we will read. These issues include the following:

• The impact of the Alexandrian Greek poet Callimachus and his aesthetic views on Catullus and later Roman poetry
• The erotic content and message of Catullus's writing
• The relationship between Catullus's poems and Catullus's life
• The Roman cultural and literary context in which Catullus worked
• The performance of Catullus's poetry
• New critical approaches to the Catullan corpus

Each student will prepare a commentary on an "understudied" Catullan poem that will take these issues and the formal philological properties of the text into account.

After Catullus, Cornelius Gallus (ca. 69-26 B.C.), a military commander, the governor of Egypt under Augustus, and a powerful and innovative literary force in elegy. Before the late 1970s, only one - pentameter - line of his poetry had survived from antiquity, although the virtual impossiblity of subjecting Gallus' actual poems to critical scrutiny did not deter scholars from imaginative speculation about what and how he had written. Two decades, a brief portion of another Gallun elegy appeared on a Egyptian papyrus fragment. We will review scholarship from both before and after the discovery.

Then, Tibullus (d. 19 B.C.) and Propertius (ca. 54-after 16 B.C.). We will study important interpretive issues including the following:

• "Sincerity" and autobiography in poetry
• Strengths and limitations of "generic" analysis as an approach to Latin poetry generally and to Propertius' work in particular
• Representations of and attitude toward women in Propertius' and other Roman elegiac texts

Next, women as writers of Roman elegy, focusing on the six poems attributed to and five poems associated with Sulpicia. Almost no evidence from antiquity about her remains, so we will examine the modern scholarly views - recent, feminist views as well as earlier, more stereotyped views - regarding the attribution and interpretation of the poems. On November 15, we will apply Terry Eagleton's study of literary theory and apply it to several scholarly works.

Last, Ovid (43 B.C. - A.D. 18) and his Amores. We will write elegiac verses of our own. We will assess modern verse translations of Ovid and the other major Roman elegists in connection with a final paper that will involve preparing commentaries on poems by Propertius, Tibullus, Sulpicia, "Lygdamus" and Ovid for high school students. The possible topics for the final paper include the following:

• Literary context for selected Latin inscriptions in elegiac verse
• Staging elegiac texts to explore the interrelationship between elegy and public performance
• A compare and contrast of the representation of homoerotic and heteroerotic passion in Roman elegy
• Investigation of the portrayal of Latin love elegy and scholarship on it in Tom Stoppard's play The Invention of Love, a play about the poetry and Latin textual critic (and Latin Dilettante perennial favorite) A. E. Housman
• Comparison of the elegies of Sulpicia with other evidence on and from ancient Greek and Roman woman poets