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Propertius and Cynthia: Elegy 1. 3 1 (1970)

R.O.A.M. Lyne

in R. O. A. M. Lyne: Collected Papers on Latin Poetry

This paper interprets 1.3 as a dramatization of disillusionment; the subversion of the character's vision of the sleeping beloved is here made into the author's presentation of a basic experience. ... More

This paper interprets 1.3 as a dramatization of disillusionment; the subversion of the character's vision of the sleeping beloved is here made into the author's presentation of a basic experience. But the character and author are identified, the basic experience is seen as the author's experience in love.Less

Propertius 3. 10 1 (1973)

R.O.A.M. Lyne

in R. O. A. M. Lyne: Collected Papers on Latin Poetry

This paper gives a close reading of this poem of Propertius, with detailed analysis of the text and its language, concentrating on the psychology of the lover.

Propertius 1. 5 1 (1974)

R.O.A.M. Lyne

in R. O. A. M. Lyne: Collected Papers on Latin Poetry

This paper suggests a reading in line 19 different from that of the vulgate, and offers clarification of the sense and point of 25-6, thus contributing to a fuller appreciation of the poem and a ... More

This paper suggests a reading in line 19 different from that of the vulgate, and offers clarification of the sense and point of 25-6, thus contributing to a fuller appreciation of the poem and a clearer picture of its structure.Less

Seruitium Amoris 1 (1979)

R.O.A.M. Lyne

in R. O. A. M. Lyne: Collected Papers on Latin Poetry

This paper is a classic treatment of the metaphor of servitude to the mistress as extensively deployed in Latin love-elegy, and argues that it was effectively invented by Propertius.

Inscription and Testimony: Propertius 4. 11

Michèle Lowrie

in Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome

In elegy 4. 11, Propertius uses the death of Cornelia, a member of Augustus' family, as an occasion to make a statement about the law and representation under Augustus. He deploys many of the ... More

In elegy 4. 11, Propertius uses the death of Cornelia, a member of Augustus' family, as an occasion to make a statement about the law and representation under Augustus. He deploys many of the strategies outlined throughout this book. He presents an impossible speech situation that spans various performance media and writing; he puns on lex and legere; he presents Cornelia as an exemplum in many ways like Augustus himself. The typical elegiac twist is that she is not the emperor, but rather a woman whose public dimension is entirely subsumed within her familial role.Less

Content, Form, and Frame

Charles Martindale

in Latin Poetry and the Judgement of Taste: An Essay in Aesthetics

This chapter attempts to counter one common objection to aesthetic judgements about artworks (including works of literature): that they are formalistic, detaching formal features of the work from the ... More

This chapter attempts to counter one common objection to aesthetic judgements about artworks (including works of literature): that they are formalistic, detaching formal features of the work from the discursive and ideological contexts of their use. It argues that the Kantian judgement of taste is a judgement of form and content. This is illustrated in connection with some Odes of Horace and poem 64 of Catullus. It argues that the issue changes complexion if attention shifts from qualities ‘in’ the work to the mind of the receiver. Derrida’s deconstruction of the neo-Kantian notion of the autonomy of art and the issue of the frame/parergon (with Propertius 1. 16 as an instance) are also examined.Less

Propertius on Not Writing about Civil Wars

Brian W. Breed

in Citizens of Discord: Rome and Its Civil Wars

This chapter argues that the challenge of writing civil war into elegy is double: in addition to the historical problem exposed by Virgil (among others) that civil war is a dangerous topic in a world ... More

This chapter argues that the challenge of writing civil war into elegy is double: in addition to the historical problem exposed by Virgil (among others) that civil war is a dangerous topic in a world spawned by civil war, there is also the generic problem that martial matters belong to epic. Yet Breed shows that Propertius' elegies, dominated by erotic rivalry and conflict between lovers, needed civil war, for civil war was the exemplum for perpetual strife. With its appropriation and consequent transformation of civil war attributes the elegiac life is held out as a remedy that might, possibly, rid Rome of civil conflict.Less

Elegy:: Overcoming Inability

Michèle Lowrie

in Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome

The traditional softness of the elegiac lover is a self-conscious rhetoric of inability that excuses the poet from the obligations of imperial citizenship. Over time, Roman elegy becomes more ... More

The traditional softness of the elegiac lover is a self-conscious rhetoric of inability that excuses the poet from the obligations of imperial citizenship. Over time, Roman elegy becomes more interested in defining its political role in terms of the media. Although it would be easy to dichotomize reading in a girl's lap and singing the praises of Caesar, elegy in fact develops a hybrid generic identity. Propertius, who at first shows little interest in specific media ends up staging a performative extravaganza to analyze his capabilities as a praise poet and Ovid moves from a position of mocking self-irony in the Amores, through self-authorization as a scholar in the Fasti, to a final assumption of song in the Metamorphoses, where the epic genre demands greater poetic self-confidence.Less

Love and Semiotics

Michèle Lowrie

in Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome

This is the first in a series of chapters on the Augustan literary epistle, where the advantages of writing come to the fore. A brief treatment of Catullus 50 outlines some of the semiotic issues of ... More

This is the first in a series of chapters on the Augustan literary epistle, where the advantages of writing come to the fore. A brief treatment of Catullus 50 outlines some of the semiotic issues of communication in absence as an introduction to the heroine epistles of Propertius and Ovid. Although separation is a source of frustration for all the literal or metaphorical lovers in these poems, their situations provide an occasion for their respective poets to explore the gap between the insufficiency of writing as a medium of communication between lovers and its great advantages for reaching a more general reader. The power of representation, of imagination, as well as concerns that anticipate modern speech act theory are addressed.Less

Introductory Poems in Propertius: 1. 1 and 2. 12 1 (1998)

R.O.A.M. Lyne

in R. O. A. M. Lyne: Collected Papers on Latin Poetry

This paper looks at these two poems, classifying them together as introductions to collections (Book 2 being a composite of two books).

Love and Death: Laodamia and Protesilaus in Catullus, Propertius, and Others 1 (1998)

R.O.A.M. Lyne

in R. O. A. M. Lyne: Collected Papers on Latin Poetry

This paper takes a completely positive view of extreme love, as seen in Catullus' Laodamia. In this it follows The Latin Love Poets. But its view of Propertius fascinatingly combines the polemical ... More

This paper takes a completely positive view of extreme love, as seen in Catullus' Laodamia. In this it follows The Latin Love Poets. But its view of Propertius fascinatingly combines the polemical author, ‘taking issue’ with another text, and the tortured author, whose subversion of his own vision subverts his attempt to confute Catullus.Less

Propertius 2. 10 and 11 and the Structure of Books ‘2a’ and ‘2b’ (1998)

R.O.A.M. Lyne

in R. O. A. M. Lyne: Collected Papers on Latin Poetry

In this paper, Lyne identifies 2.10/11 as a single poem and as the close of one of the two ancient books that make up the transmitted Propertius Book 2, which he calls ‘Book 2a’. There is also a ... More

In this paper, Lyne identifies 2.10/11 as a single poem and as the close of one of the two ancient books that make up the transmitted Propertius Book 2, which he calls ‘Book 2a’. There is also a discussion of ‘Book 2b’, which he begins with 2.13.Less

Propertius and Tibullus: Early Exchanges 1 (1998)

R.O.A.M. Lyne

in R. O. A. M. Lyne: Collected Papers on Latin Poetry

This paper presents Tibullus and Propertius in more straightforward antagonism in their books 1 and 2, Tibullus parodying Propertius, Propertius mocking and outdoing Tibullus.

Pound's Savage Ratios

Vincent Sherry

in The Great War and the Language of Modernism

This chapter follows the development of Ezra Pound's modernist poetry as it responds to the culture of Great War Britain. As an American in London, Pound is alert to the postures of the partisan ... More

This chapter follows the development of Ezra Pound's modernist poetry as it responds to the culture of Great War Britain. As an American in London, Pound is alert to the postures of the partisan press of Liberal England, and as a former colonial, he animates powerfully to the self-contradictory language of the former imperial power. His response to the verbal culture of war-time journalism informs the multi-part review he serialized through 1917 in the New Age, “Studies in Contemporary Mentality”. The “seeming reason” he locates as the tone of the political times is answered in his own poetry with a style of mock logic or sham rationality that is new to his developing opus. This tone is heard as the major development in his creative translation, Homage to Sextus Propertius, in his fictional autobiographical sequence, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and in the initial installments of his emergent life-work, The Cantos.Less

Conclusion

Jörg Rüpke

in On Roman Religion: Lived Religion and the Individual in Ancient Rome

This concluding chapter argues that lived religion and individual appropriations are identifiable at the heart of rituals like praying, vowing, dedicating, and reading. It then assesses how different ... More

This concluding chapter argues that lived religion and individual appropriations are identifiable at the heart of rituals like praying, vowing, dedicating, and reading. It then assesses how different authors reflect on individual appropriation of religion among their contemporaries. Whereas Propertius remains in the role of the distant observer of a traditional religious role, and Ovid follows him in this, Hermas urgently pursues distribution and thereby opens up new religious roles for his recipients. For him, religious individuality has become crucial. A very old explanation for this exists: the classification of Hermas as a Christian. Neither the causes of Hermas's religious individuality nor its consequences are restricted to what are later claimed as features of a Christian genealogy: being a Jew, a Roman, a businessman, and a citizen of the Roman Empire.Less

Ezra Pound: ‘My job was to bring a dead man to life’

Matthew Reynolds

in The Poetry of Translation: From Chaucer & Petrarch to Homer & Logue

Since at least the time of Dryden, a ‘dead’ translation has been a bad one. But during the nineteenth century, poets became interested in the expressive possibilities of a dead style: Browning is one ... More

Since at least the time of Dryden, a ‘dead’ translation has been a bad one. But during the nineteenth century, poets became interested in the expressive possibilities of a dead style: Browning is one example. Pound's recorded statements on translation generally assert the need to ‘present’ a ‘vivid personality’ or ‘bring a dead man to life’. But the idea that something from the past might become ‘present’ again is complex, and results in a poetry of translation which is as interested in deadness as in life. I trace this aspect of Pound's writing through his translations of Cavalcanti, Cathay and Homage to Sextus Propertius. The conflict owes something to wider modernist concerns; but it is fuelled by the activity of translation.Less

Supping with Ghosts: Imitation and Immortality in Herrick

Syrithe Pugh

in ‘Lords of Wine and Oile’: Community and Conviviality in the Poetry of Robert Herrick

The assertion of immortality on the title-page of Hesperides, Effugient avidos Carmina nostra Rogos--a misquotation from Ovid's elegy for Tibullus--is no mere invocation of a literary commonplace. ... More

The assertion of immortality on the title-page of Hesperides, Effugient avidos Carmina nostra Rogos--a misquotation from Ovid's elegy for Tibullus--is no mere invocation of a literary commonplace. Rather, it points to a nexus of intertextual relations involving poems on death, afterlife, and poetic companionship in Tibullus, Propertius, the Amores and Ovid's exile poetry, which is persistently important to Herrick. Ovid's elegy makes poetic imitation itself integral to its consideration of literary immortality, figuring poetry as an ongoing conversation between poets living and dead. In Herrick's numerous evocations of this group of interrelated poems we see him entering the conversation with his classical predecessors, and extending it to his near contemporaries through beautifully integrated allusions to Dante, Shakespeare, Denham, Cowley, Carew, and above all Jonson.Less

Augustan Responses to the Aeneid

Matthew Robinson

in Epic Interactions: Perspectives on Homer, Virgil, and the Epic Tradition Presented to Jasper Griffin by Former Pupils

This chapter explores how the Augustan poets respond to both the poetics and the politics of the Aeneid. It focuses on Horace, Propertius, and Ovid, and then only a few of their poems. It assumes ... More

This chapter explores how the Augustan poets respond to both the poetics and the politics of the Aeneid. It focuses on Horace, Propertius, and Ovid, and then only a few of their poems. It assumes that Horace and Propertius are familiar with at least some of the content of the Aeneid while it is being written, and all of the poem before their final books are published. It is important to remember that their response to the Aeneid does not take place in a vacuum, but rather in the context of their responses to other pressures, both internal and external. While the Aeneid was an important motivation for all these poets to assert their poetic identities more strongly, this motivation may well have been ‘working with’ other factors pushing in the same direction.Less

Appropriating Images—Embodying Gods

Jörg Rüpke

in On Roman Religion: Lived Religion and the Individual in Ancient Rome

This chapter examines a text by the Augustan poet Sextus Propertius, Propertius 4.2, which has a god speak about himself in the first person. This text analyzes the identity of god and image. On the ... More

This chapter examines a text by the Augustan poet Sextus Propertius, Propertius 4.2, which has a god speak about himself in the first person. This text analyzes the identity of god and image. On the one hand, the god—who introduces himself by the name of Vertumnus—claims an identity independent of situational appropriations and even of his image. He implicitly claims an identity within different material shapes, including statuettes and paintings. In the fiction of the speech, the god claims such an identity by remembering other and former images. However, he remains subject to them; he is bound to concrete appropriations. Similarly, Vertumnus's physical movements are located in the imagination of observers, where the manifestation of the “present” is extended into imagined sequences of actions.Less