Description
Book SynopsisPropertius re-invents Latin love-elegy in his third collection. Nearly a decade into the Augustan principate, the early counter-cultural impulse of Propertius'' first collections was losing its relevance. Challenged by the publication of Horace''s Odes, and by the imminent arrival of Virgil''s Aeneid, in 23 BCE Propertius produced a radical collection of elegy which critically interrogates elegy''s own origins as a genre, and which directly faces off Horatian lyric and Virgilian epic, as part of an ambitious claim to Augustan pre-eminence. But this is no moment of cultural submission. In Book 3, elegy''s key themes of love, fidelity, and political independence are rebuilt from the beginning as part of a subtle critique of emerging Augustan mores. This book presents a series of readings of fourteen individual elegies from Propertius Book 3, including nostalgic love poems, an elegiac hymn to Bacchus, and a lament for Marcellus, the recently-dead nephew of Augustus.
Trade Review"Wallis writes in a lively manner and ends with a succinct and polyglottal bibliography....The reader will in no way be hindered by any errors in the text." -- Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Table of Contents1. Turning elegy upside down: Propertius 3.1-3; 2. Seeking Fides in poets and poetry: Propertius 3.6; 3. Thematic experimentation: Propertius 3.9-11; 4. Marriage and the elegiac woman: Propertius 3.12; 5. Delays and destinations: Propertius 3.16; 6. A Hymn to Bacchus: Propertius 3.17; 7. In lament for Marcellus: Propertius 3.18; 8. Renewing an elegiac contract: Propertius 3.20; 9. Breaking up (with) Cynthia: Propertius 3.24.
