Lesel Dawson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199266128
- eISBN:
- 9780191708688
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266128.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Women's Literature
The discourse of love, which is subjective, private, and instinctive, is also culturally constructed, public, and learned; it emphasizes the way in which the expression of reflexive feelings is bound ...
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The discourse of love, which is subjective, private, and instinctive, is also culturally constructed, public, and learned; it emphasizes the way in which the expression of reflexive feelings is bound up in wider historical narratives about bodies and interiority. In early modern medical texts, intense unfulfilled erotic desire is held to be a real and virulent disease: it is classified as a species of melancholy, with physical aetiologies and cures. This book analyses literary representations of lovesickness in relation to medical ideas about desire and wider questions about gender and identity, exploring the different ways that desire is believed to take root in the body, how gender roles are encoded and contested in courtship, and the psychic pains and pleasures of frustrated passion. It considers the relationship between women's lovesickness and other female maladies (such as hysteria and green sickness), and asks whether women can suffer from intellectual forms of melancholy generally thought to be exclusively male. It also examines the ways in which Neoplatonism offers an alternative construction of love to that found in natural philosophy, inverting much of the medical advice for what is held to be healthy in romantic love and promoting a different hierarchical relationship between the sexes. Finally, this study considers how anxieties concerning love's ability to emasculate the male lover emerge indirectly in remedies for lovesickness, illuminating ideas about masculinity as well as some of the psychic contradictions of erotic desire. Authors considered include: Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, and William Davenant.Less
The discourse of love, which is subjective, private, and instinctive, is also culturally constructed, public, and learned; it emphasizes the way in which the expression of reflexive feelings is bound up in wider historical narratives about bodies and interiority. In early modern medical texts, intense unfulfilled erotic desire is held to be a real and virulent disease: it is classified as a species of melancholy, with physical aetiologies and cures. This book analyses literary representations of lovesickness in relation to medical ideas about desire and wider questions about gender and identity, exploring the different ways that desire is believed to take root in the body, how gender roles are encoded and contested in courtship, and the psychic pains and pleasures of frustrated passion. It considers the relationship between women's lovesickness and other female maladies (such as hysteria and green sickness), and asks whether women can suffer from intellectual forms of melancholy generally thought to be exclusively male. It also examines the ways in which Neoplatonism offers an alternative construction of love to that found in natural philosophy, inverting much of the medical advice for what is held to be healthy in romantic love and promoting a different hierarchical relationship between the sexes. Finally, this study considers how anxieties concerning love's ability to emasculate the male lover emerge indirectly in remedies for lovesickness, illuminating ideas about masculinity as well as some of the psychic contradictions of erotic desire. Authors considered include: Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, and William Davenant.
Michael W. Dols and Diana E. Immisch
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198202219
- eISBN:
- 9780191675218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198202219.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, World Medieval History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Profane love, when it was excessive, was commonly believed to be a form of madness. This chapter discusses love in the light of the Qur'an and romantic love in Arabic poetry, such as that of Majnun. ...
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Profane love, when it was excessive, was commonly believed to be a form of madness. This chapter discusses love in the light of the Qur'an and romantic love in Arabic poetry, such as that of Majnun. Profane love was usually considered by Muslim writers from two opposing points of view. The positive view of love ('ishq) saw it as ‘a complex and exceedingly interesting but mysterious human experience’. The negative view of 'ishq considered it as a moral/religious issue; 'ishq was equated with lust — a vulnerability that was particularly detrimental to Arab male pride — that could easily lead to a tragic end.Less
Profane love, when it was excessive, was commonly believed to be a form of madness. This chapter discusses love in the light of the Qur'an and romantic love in Arabic poetry, such as that of Majnun. Profane love was usually considered by Muslim writers from two opposing points of view. The positive view of love ('ishq) saw it as ‘a complex and exceedingly interesting but mysterious human experience’. The negative view of 'ishq considered it as a moral/religious issue; 'ishq was equated with lust — a vulnerability that was particularly detrimental to Arab male pride — that could easily lead to a tragic end.
Sylvia Huot
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199252121
- eISBN:
- 9780191719110
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252121.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter examines literary treatments of madness in connection with love and sexual desire, with a focus on the male heterosexual subject. Analyses trace the tension between erotic desire and ...
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This chapter examines literary treatments of madness in connection with love and sexual desire, with a focus on the male heterosexual subject. Analyses trace the tension between erotic desire and misogynistic revulsion, as well as that between heterosexual desire and homosocial bonding, in a series of texts. The spectre of homoerotic desire that haunts many medieval romances is also examined. Negotiating these conflicting demands and emotions can result in both feigned and genuine madness for many heroes of chivalric romance. Examples include Amadas et Ydoine, Ipomedon, the prose Tristan — focusing on the interplay between Tristan, Mark, Palamedes, and Kahedin —, Marie de France’s Lanval, and the episode of the sodomitic king Agriano in the romance Bérinus.Less
This chapter examines literary treatments of madness in connection with love and sexual desire, with a focus on the male heterosexual subject. Analyses trace the tension between erotic desire and misogynistic revulsion, as well as that between heterosexual desire and homosocial bonding, in a series of texts. The spectre of homoerotic desire that haunts many medieval romances is also examined. Negotiating these conflicting demands and emotions can result in both feigned and genuine madness for many heroes of chivalric romance. Examples include Amadas et Ydoine, Ipomedon, the prose Tristan — focusing on the interplay between Tristan, Mark, Palamedes, and Kahedin —, Marie de France’s Lanval, and the episode of the sodomitic king Agriano in the romance Bérinus.
Sylvia Huot
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199252121
- eISBN:
- 9780191719110
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252121.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Drawing on the theories of Lacan, Kristeva, Žižek, and Butler, this chapter examines the treatment of lovesickness as a living death in Bérinus, Amadas et Ydoine, the prose Tristan, and Guillaume de ...
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Drawing on the theories of Lacan, Kristeva, Žižek, and Butler, this chapter examines the treatment of lovesickness as a living death in Bérinus, Amadas et Ydoine, the prose Tristan, and Guillaume de Machaut’s Jugement du roy de Navarre. In these texts, madness is associated with different forms and degrees of ‘living death’ — the state of inhabiting the ‘zone entre-deux-morts’ — as characters undergo bodily deterioration and disease, mental dissolution, or the loss of a symbolically constructed social identity. The role of gender is shown to be paramount, as male and female experiences of love, desire, and madness are shown to be carefully differentiated in all texts under discussion. In general, women are depicted as suffering bodily illness or death, while men are shown as undergoing the ‘symbolic death’ of madness.Less
Drawing on the theories of Lacan, Kristeva, Žižek, and Butler, this chapter examines the treatment of lovesickness as a living death in Bérinus, Amadas et Ydoine, the prose Tristan, and Guillaume de Machaut’s Jugement du roy de Navarre. In these texts, madness is associated with different forms and degrees of ‘living death’ — the state of inhabiting the ‘zone entre-deux-morts’ — as characters undergo bodily deterioration and disease, mental dissolution, or the loss of a symbolically constructed social identity. The role of gender is shown to be paramount, as male and female experiences of love, desire, and madness are shown to be carefully differentiated in all texts under discussion. In general, women are depicted as suffering bodily illness or death, while men are shown as undergoing the ‘symbolic death’ of madness.
Marion A. Wells
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804750462
- eISBN:
- 9780804767446
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804750462.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. It argues that the ...
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This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. It argues that the medical profile of the melancholic lover provides an essential context for understanding the characteristic patterns of romance: narrative deferral, epistemological uncertainty, and the endless quest for a quasi-phantasmic beloved. The book establishes a detailed historical basis for investigating the psychological structure of romance. It begins by tracing the development of the medical disorder first known in the Latin west as amor hereos (lovesickness) from its earliest roots in Greek and Arabic medicine to its translation into the Latin medical tradition. Drawing on this detailed historical material, the book considers three important early modern romances: Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, concluding with a brief consideration of the significance of this literary and medical legacy for Romanticism. Most broadly, the interdisciplinary nature of this study allows the author to investigate the central critical problem of early modern subjectivity in new ways.Less
This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. It argues that the medical profile of the melancholic lover provides an essential context for understanding the characteristic patterns of romance: narrative deferral, epistemological uncertainty, and the endless quest for a quasi-phantasmic beloved. The book establishes a detailed historical basis for investigating the psychological structure of romance. It begins by tracing the development of the medical disorder first known in the Latin west as amor hereos (lovesickness) from its earliest roots in Greek and Arabic medicine to its translation into the Latin medical tradition. Drawing on this detailed historical material, the book considers three important early modern romances: Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, concluding with a brief consideration of the significance of this literary and medical legacy for Romanticism. Most broadly, the interdisciplinary nature of this study allows the author to investigate the central critical problem of early modern subjectivity in new ways.
Lisa S. Starks
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474430067
- eISBN:
- 9781474476973
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430067.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter applies Maurizio Calbi’s concept of Shakespeare’s contemporary spectrality, based on Derridean “hauntology,” to Ovid in the early modern era. It explores Ovid as an icon of lovesickness ...
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This chapter applies Maurizio Calbi’s concept of Shakespeare’s contemporary spectrality, based on Derridean “hauntology,” to Ovid in the early modern era. It explores Ovid as an icon of lovesickness and theatricality, with interconnections between these terms, in early modern representations of and debates on the theatrical experience itself. The chapter moves from the height of Ovidian theatre to its shadowy afterlife – focusing primarily on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Jonson’s Poetaster, and the obscure interregnum closet drama Ovids Ghost – to explore the uncanny returns of spectral Ovids in related discourses concerning metamorphic illusion and the “self-shattering effects of painful love.”Less
This chapter applies Maurizio Calbi’s concept of Shakespeare’s contemporary spectrality, based on Derridean “hauntology,” to Ovid in the early modern era. It explores Ovid as an icon of lovesickness and theatricality, with interconnections between these terms, in early modern representations of and debates on the theatrical experience itself. The chapter moves from the height of Ovidian theatre to its shadowy afterlife – focusing primarily on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Jonson’s Poetaster, and the obscure interregnum closet drama Ovids Ghost – to explore the uncanny returns of spectral Ovids in related discourses concerning metamorphic illusion and the “self-shattering effects of painful love.”
J. F. Bernard
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474417334
- eISBN:
- 9781474453752
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417334.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The chapters attest to the mutual transformation of comedy and melancholy that Shakespeare develops. considers the ways in which early Shakespearean comedies interrogate established conceptions of ...
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The chapters attest to the mutual transformation of comedy and melancholy that Shakespeare develops. considers the ways in which early Shakespearean comedies interrogate established conceptions of english melancholy such as lovesickness, mourning and interiority. Both The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost apply pressure on these melancholic expressions by developing them within explicitly comedic settings. The chapter underscores the critique that Shakespearean comedy performs in reworking such philosophical notions, which culminates in the ambiguously happy resolution put forth. In both plays, there exist parallel efforts to neutralise and rehabilitate melancholic characters. The humour is not easily purged away through medical expertise, nor is it ultimately celebrated as a sign of interiority. There remains a perceptible sense of doubt as to whether characters eventually do away with the melancholy they express. Love’s Labour’s Lost in particular, with the jarring announcement of the King’s death, suggests that the melancholy of early comedies shatters established classification. In its initial form, the chapter suggests, Shakespearean comedy already rejects traditional definitions of melancholy.Less
The chapters attest to the mutual transformation of comedy and melancholy that Shakespeare develops. considers the ways in which early Shakespearean comedies interrogate established conceptions of english melancholy such as lovesickness, mourning and interiority. Both The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost apply pressure on these melancholic expressions by developing them within explicitly comedic settings. The chapter underscores the critique that Shakespearean comedy performs in reworking such philosophical notions, which culminates in the ambiguously happy resolution put forth. In both plays, there exist parallel efforts to neutralise and rehabilitate melancholic characters. The humour is not easily purged away through medical expertise, nor is it ultimately celebrated as a sign of interiority. There remains a perceptible sense of doubt as to whether characters eventually do away with the melancholy they express. Love’s Labour’s Lost in particular, with the jarring announcement of the King’s death, suggests that the melancholy of early comedies shatters established classification. In its initial form, the chapter suggests, Shakespearean comedy already rejects traditional definitions of melancholy.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804750462
- eISBN:
- 9780804767446
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804750462.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In De amore, Marsilio Ficino's seventh and final speech, considers the kind of love that is the “opposite” of Socratic love, a form of insanity rather than the “divine madness” praised by Plato as a ...
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In De amore, Marsilio Ficino's seventh and final speech, considers the kind of love that is the “opposite” of Socratic love, a form of insanity rather than the “divine madness” praised by Plato as a means to knowledge. Ficino insists that this “insanity” is a form of love while delineating the features of what he also calls “vulgar love.” The opening stages of the seventh speech, which purports to interpret the poem Donna me prega by Guido Cavalcanti, show Ficino's unease with the implications of the medical treatment of love-melancholy. In his speech, Ficino is indebted to Dino del Garbo's commentary but nevertheless transforms Cavalcanti's poem into a vehicle for his own version of Platonic love. In his commentary, del Garbo names this form of love amor ereos (“lovesickness”). This chapter examines the complex medical history that makes possible Ficino's commentary on love-melancholy in De amore, and shows that the medical/philosophical tradition of love-melancholy engages in complex ways with a Platonic view of love.Less
In De amore, Marsilio Ficino's seventh and final speech, considers the kind of love that is the “opposite” of Socratic love, a form of insanity rather than the “divine madness” praised by Plato as a means to knowledge. Ficino insists that this “insanity” is a form of love while delineating the features of what he also calls “vulgar love.” The opening stages of the seventh speech, which purports to interpret the poem Donna me prega by Guido Cavalcanti, show Ficino's unease with the implications of the medical treatment of love-melancholy. In his speech, Ficino is indebted to Dino del Garbo's commentary but nevertheless transforms Cavalcanti's poem into a vehicle for his own version of Platonic love. In his commentary, del Garbo names this form of love amor ereos (“lovesickness”). This chapter examines the complex medical history that makes possible Ficino's commentary on love-melancholy in De amore, and shows that the medical/philosophical tradition of love-melancholy engages in complex ways with a Platonic view of love.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804750462
- eISBN:
- 9780804767446
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804750462.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, its depiction of the mutual influence of her “bleeding bowels” and mental suffering, and the implications of this gendering of ...
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This chapter examines Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, its depiction of the mutual influence of her “bleeding bowels” and mental suffering, and the implications of this gendering of love-melancholy as a form of hysteria for the poem's broader revision of romance. Here Glauce invokes the inward space of Britomart's body as the invisible site of a mysterious suffering, trying to conceal the real cause with obfuscating rhetoric. Spenser provides a more precise reference to the source of Britomart's suffering as her “love-sicke hart,” because Britomart is suffering from the female form of lovesickness or love-melancholy. This chapter analyzes the cultural and poetic significance of Britomart's “love-sick hart” by juxtaposing Spenser's descriptions of Britomart's psychosomatic suffering with contemporary medical accounts of female love-melancholy (also termed “uterine fury”) and its treatment. Finally, it looks at the house of Busirane as a complex allegorization of Scudamour's atra voluptas—a willfully indulged erotic suffering that holds the beloved (Amoret) prisoner by stripping her of any reality outside her lover's obsessive mind.Less
This chapter examines Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, its depiction of the mutual influence of her “bleeding bowels” and mental suffering, and the implications of this gendering of love-melancholy as a form of hysteria for the poem's broader revision of romance. Here Glauce invokes the inward space of Britomart's body as the invisible site of a mysterious suffering, trying to conceal the real cause with obfuscating rhetoric. Spenser provides a more precise reference to the source of Britomart's suffering as her “love-sicke hart,” because Britomart is suffering from the female form of lovesickness or love-melancholy. This chapter analyzes the cultural and poetic significance of Britomart's “love-sick hart” by juxtaposing Spenser's descriptions of Britomart's psychosomatic suffering with contemporary medical accounts of female love-melancholy (also termed “uterine fury”) and its treatment. Finally, it looks at the house of Busirane as a complex allegorization of Scudamour's atra voluptas—a willfully indulged erotic suffering that holds the beloved (Amoret) prisoner by stripping her of any reality outside her lover's obsessive mind.
William C. Carter
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300108125
- eISBN:
- 9780300134889
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300108125.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter tells the account of Alfred Agostinelli's later influence in the life of Marcel Proust. In the spring of 1913, Agostinelli sought and appealed to Proust for work. But as Proust had ...
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This chapter tells the account of Alfred Agostinelli's later influence in the life of Marcel Proust. In the spring of 1913, Agostinelli sought and appealed to Proust for work. But as Proust had already hired Odilon Albaret as his regular driver, Agostinelli was instead given the position of Proust's secretary, aiding in the preparing the typescript of Swann's Way. The chapter recounts how Proust showered Agostinelli with money, and of how the two confided in one another, and of Proust's eventual fall for the young, athletic Italian. The chapter then links Agostinelli to Proust's writing of Albertine. The chapter also talks about the lovesickness that Proust would experience, especially in the eventual publication of Swann's Way, where in a letter to his literary friend Louis de Robert, Proust would mention this lovesickness over Agostinelli.Less
This chapter tells the account of Alfred Agostinelli's later influence in the life of Marcel Proust. In the spring of 1913, Agostinelli sought and appealed to Proust for work. But as Proust had already hired Odilon Albaret as his regular driver, Agostinelli was instead given the position of Proust's secretary, aiding in the preparing the typescript of Swann's Way. The chapter recounts how Proust showered Agostinelli with money, and of how the two confided in one another, and of Proust's eventual fall for the young, athletic Italian. The chapter then links Agostinelli to Proust's writing of Albertine. The chapter also talks about the lovesickness that Proust would experience, especially in the eventual publication of Swann's Way, where in a letter to his literary friend Louis de Robert, Proust would mention this lovesickness over Agostinelli.
Julia Dyson Hejduk
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- April 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190607739
- eISBN:
- 9780190607753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190607739.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
While Augustus in Propertius stands for Roman military power, Jupiter’s additional association with sex makes him a far more complex figure. The erotic rivalry between Jupiter and Propertius ...
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While Augustus in Propertius stands for Roman military power, Jupiter’s additional association with sex makes him a far more complex figure. The erotic rivalry between Jupiter and Propertius throughout book 2, the lovesickness book, would devolve into even greater absurdity if Jupiter were metonymy for Augustus. Whether or not Augustus is on his way to becoming a “Jupiter figure,” the four poems in which he and the god are juxtaposed make clear the increasing concentration of power in the hands of one man. In book 2, Jupiter’s unsung Gigantomachy, followed immediately by Augustus’s unsung Aeneid, creates a connection; the inability of either Jupiter or Caesar to separate devoted lovers strengthens it. Book 3 floats the idea—playfully, one hopes—of an opposition between the chief man and the chief god, as the poet claims that Rome should not fear even Jupiter while Augustus is safe. By book 4, Jupiter has been further upstaged by Augustus, merely sitting in the audience while Caesar’s victory at Actium is sung. On the other hand, the rise and fall of Jupiter the Lover throughout Propertius’s poems does tell us something about the changing mores of Augustan Rome. The absence of this figure from book 4, and his replacement with the censorious persona who refuses to “suffer” Tarpeia’s love-wounds, may reflect the moral climate that Augustus’s marriage and adultery legislation sought to foster. Yet like the revenant Cynthia of 4.8, combining Juno’s wrath with Jupiter’s might, amor cannot really be killed.Less
While Augustus in Propertius stands for Roman military power, Jupiter’s additional association with sex makes him a far more complex figure. The erotic rivalry between Jupiter and Propertius throughout book 2, the lovesickness book, would devolve into even greater absurdity if Jupiter were metonymy for Augustus. Whether or not Augustus is on his way to becoming a “Jupiter figure,” the four poems in which he and the god are juxtaposed make clear the increasing concentration of power in the hands of one man. In book 2, Jupiter’s unsung Gigantomachy, followed immediately by Augustus’s unsung Aeneid, creates a connection; the inability of either Jupiter or Caesar to separate devoted lovers strengthens it. Book 3 floats the idea—playfully, one hopes—of an opposition between the chief man and the chief god, as the poet claims that Rome should not fear even Jupiter while Augustus is safe. By book 4, Jupiter has been further upstaged by Augustus, merely sitting in the audience while Caesar’s victory at Actium is sung. On the other hand, the rise and fall of Jupiter the Lover throughout Propertius’s poems does tell us something about the changing mores of Augustan Rome. The absence of this figure from book 4, and his replacement with the censorious persona who refuses to “suffer” Tarpeia’s love-wounds, may reflect the moral climate that Augustus’s marriage and adultery legislation sought to foster. Yet like the revenant Cynthia of 4.8, combining Juno’s wrath with Jupiter’s might, amor cannot really be killed.