Ekphrasis, Digression and Elegy: The Propertius' second Book (original) (raw)
Related papers
The gendered characterization of the Propertian lover-poet does not fit comfortably into either the role of a traditionally masculine elite male Roman or that of an effeminate elegiac lover. This dissertation argues for a lover-poet whose gender role draws on and reacts to elements from both of these pre-existing roles with the end result of a character that disidentifies with Roman gender roles and exists outside of the binary oppositions that they provide. The lover-poet's characterization is intimately bound to that of his elegiac puella, usually identified in the poetry as Cynthia, and as such the focus of this dissertation is on the poems in which the lover-poet and Cynthia interact. Propertius explores tensions inherent in the gendered roles and relationships of elegy through his exposure of the limits of elegiac fides and his interaction with non-elegiac fides as part of the language of Roman social relations. These tensions are further exposed through his use of women's speech, which depicts women as critical of both the elegiac scenario and of mainstream Roman values.
Ghostwriting Elegy in Propertius 4.7
Cynthia’s exemplary elegiac performance in 4.7—coming (nearly) at the end of Propertian elegy, and offering a sweeping reorganisation of the existing poetry, right back to the beginning—presents itself provocatively as the model after which Propertian elegy has itself been shaped. Cynthia’s acute awareness of her vulnerability to others’ representational control, and her concern to destabilise the cultural apparatus that has determined her biography, offer retrospective commentary on the origins of Propertius’ own emasculated persona and the broader critique his poetry offers of Roman authority and ideology.
Vale, Amor! A lecture on Propertius III, 24-25
2012
In this talk, I try to demonstrate a bit how an Ancient book can be consciously organized by its author, pointing out, through the reading of a specific poem, Propertius’ III, 24-25, editorial relationships between poems and books – relationships which are established by common topoi, by common res, by common vocabulary. [In English]
Propertius’ Progress of Rome: Elegies 4.4 and 4.9
The fourth book of Propertius' Elegies marks the progress in the genre of elegy itself, introducing an aetiological aspect. Αt the same time Propertius' poetic voice expands in order to include a number of different mythological voices. Elegies 4.4 and 4.9 are two representative examples of this, giving voice to Tarpeia and Hercules. The current paper aims to show the progress in the literary figures of Tarpeia and Hercules: Tarpeia will be given her own voice for the first time, inscribing herself in elegy, while an epic struggle of Hercules with Cacus will be replaced by that of Hercules with elegy. It will also be argued that, apart from employing the same literary background, these two elegies are connected through the motives of conflict between female and male, elegy and epic, space and space, and also through the game of appearance and social status. Propertius plays with the expectations of the reader, well acquainted with the 8 th book of Virgil's Aeneid and Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, and like a new Evander, he takes us on a journey in time, giving his own account on the progress of locus in Rome. Going backwards in time, from the story of Tarpeia to the one of Hercules and Cacus, the progress in the formation of contemporary Rome and its most recognizable monuments is seen by Propertius as a result of a struggle between mythological figures, who wish to gain access to different genres: the elegiac Tarpeia in the epic space of the epic Tatius and the epic Hercules in the elegiac worship space of Bona Dea.
Virgilian Intertexts and Ironic Pathos in Propertius 2.16
AION (filol.) Annali dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”, 2022
Starting from an allusion to Eclogue 1 in Propertius 2.16, the article provides a new interpretation of the entire elegy in the light of the complex intertextual play which pervades the whole poem. Eclogues 1 and 10, the Georgics and even Horace are here combined with allusions to Comedy and evoked only to be subverted and parodied in a piece of Callimachean poetry, full of ‘metaliterary’ irony.
The Elegiac Revolution: Deleuze, Desire, and Propertius' Monobiblos
Psychology and the Classics: A Dialogue of Disciplines, ed. Jeroen Lauwers, Jan Opsomer, and Hedwig Schwall, 2018
In recent decades, Latin elegy and Augustan poetry have witnessed a number of studies employing psychoanalysis as their primary theoretical framework. Moreover, many of these readings have characterized elegy as a schizoid, incoherent, or hybrid genre. This paper seeks to extend such claims by reading the Roman elegiac poet Propertius alongside Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's well-known critique of psychoanalysis, Anti-Oedipus. By using schizoanalysis to read Propertius' first book of poems, we are encouraged to see how our reconstructed classical works consist of numerous competing voices, extending from the Augustan socioeconomic and historical influences on the poetic corpus to the ideological effects of many centuries of editorial interventions. In this manner, we can better witness the productive force of elegiac desire—from the schizoid addressees within the Monobiblos who struggle to escape the libidinal economies of their mistress Cynthia in the wake of Augustan marriage legislation, to the competing claims of textual critics, who underwrite the elegiac poems with their own unconscious desires.