T. E. Franklinos - Böcker

This volume brings together eleven chapters on the genre of Latin elegy by leading scholars in the field.Latin elegy is typically thought to have flourished for a brief period at Rome between c. 40 BC and the early decades of the first century AD; it was the pre-eminent vehicle for writing about amatory matters in this period and among its principal exponents were Propertius and Ovid, whose works constitute the focus of this volume. Their poems and poetic collections were, however, by no means restricted to the themes of love, even if amatory concerns often surface at unexpected moments in texts that are not ostensibly concerned with love. Both poets were alive to their precursors' writings in elegiacs, and so aetiological themes and reflection on contemporary political circumstances form an integral part of their poetry. Such concerns are explored in some of the chapters on Propertius, on Ovid's Fasti and exile poetry, and also in a Renaissance elegy that looks closely to its literary heritage as it comments on the concerns of its day. Some contributions to this volume also shed new light on the typically elegiac conceit of separation, notably in amatory and exilic texts, while others look to conceptions of Roman identity and the relationship between the natural world and the cultural, political and literary spheres. All of the chapters share an interest in the close-reading of texts as the basis for drawing broader conclusions about these fascinating authors, their poetry, and their worlds.

Propertius' Cynthia considers Propertius' metapoetic and intra- and intertextual habits and their relationship with the repetitious amatory discourse that he fashions for himself with his beloved, Cynthia. Where scholarship tends to treat as separate the metaliterary and the amatory aspects of Propertius' poetry, this volume - focussed on Books 3 and 4 - argues that his discussion of his own poetry and of his relationship to it as an author-figure - his metapoetic commentary - is closely married to, and can be clearly mapped onto, his account of his relationship with Cynthia, especially in Books 1-3. Moreover, it demonstrates that the amorous discourse the elegist fashions is constituted of a poetics of repetitiousness that is apt for the articulation of an elegiac relationship that, by its nature, cannot progress. The encounters between Propertius and Cynthia are repetitive, and the poet mirrors these in his recollection of lexical and thematic aspects of earlier poems in later ones. Each poem provides a fragmentary glance at Propertius' relationship and, through repetitions with variation, the elegist shapes his readers' understanding of his amatory discourse. Furthermore, it is argued that, since his beloved is the embodiment of his poetry, Propertius' account of his changing relationship with her allows him to articulate the transformations of his elegiac corpus; this becomes most significant as the close of Book 3 appears to end their relationship and he begins a radical experimentation with the generic bounds of elegy that is expanded in Book 4, where the polyvalent Vertumnus embodies the poet's work.