J. Wallis, Introspection and Engagement in Propertius

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Jonathan Wallis, Introspection and Engagement in Propertius. A Study of Book 3, Cambridge, 2018.

Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
Collection : Cambridge Classical Studies
248 pages
ISBN : 9781108417174
75 £

 

Propertius 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.


1. 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.

 

Source : Cambridge University Press