Record Nr.

UNINA9910969808103321

Autore

Wray David <1959->

Titolo

Catullus and the poetics of Roman manhood / / David Wray

Pubbl/distr/stampa


Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2001

ISBN


1-107-11807-7
1-280-42084-7
0-511-17434-9
0-511-04868-8
0-511-15414-3
0-511-32827-3
0-511-48244-2
0-511-01802-9

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xi, 246 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

874/.01

Soggetti

Elegiac poetry, Latin - History and criticism

Love poetry, Latin - History and criticism

Epigrams, Latin - History and criticism

Masculinity in literature

Self in literature

Men in literature

Intertextuality

Rome In literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-234) and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Catullan criticism and the problem of lyric -- 2. A postmodern Catullus? -- 3. Manhood and Lesbia in the shorter poems -- 4. Towards a Mediterranean poetics of aggression -- 5. Code models of Catullan manhood.

Sommario/riassunto

This book applies comparative cultural and literary models to a reading of Catullus' poems as social performances of a 'poetics of manhood': a competitively, often outrageously, self-allusive bid for recognition and admiration. Earlier readings of Catullus, based on Romantic and

Modernist notions of 'lyric' poetry, have tended to focus on the relationship with Lesbia and to ignore the majority of the shorter poems, which are instead directed at other men. Professor Wray approaches these poems in the light of more recent models for understanding male social interaction in the premodern Mediterranean, placing them in their specifically Roman historical context while bringing out their strikingly 'postmodern' qualities. The result is an alternative way of reading the fiercely aggressive and delicately refined agonism performed in Catullus' shorter poems. All Latin and Greek quoted is supplied with an English translation.