The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy

by Thea S. Thorsen (Editor)

Overview

In this volume leading international scholars offer a comprehensive, critical and engaging presentation of the genre of Latin love elegy. Opening with an outline of Greek elegy and Latin precursors, the volume challenges the conception of Gallus as the 'inventor' of Latin love elegy, highlights how Sulpicia, the only woman whose poetry is extant, makes the genre unique in the history of Augustan literature in terms of gender, and provides fresh presentations of the canonical Latin elegists. Five chapters visit the world of Latin love elegy, the time, place and political background, the stock figures and the slavery of love and erotic campaigning. A whole section treats the limits of Latin love elegy, which seem to be inherent to the genre itself. Nevertheless, the volume closes with a series of investigations into the reception of Latin love elegy, which attests to its vital influence on the history of Western literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521765367
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2013
Series:	Cambridge Companions to Literature
Pages:	452
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.10(d)

About the Author

Thea S. Thorsen is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Classical Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She is the author of Ovid's Early Poetry: From His Single Heroides to his Remedia Amoris (forthcoming) and editor of two volumes based on conferences which she initiated and co-organized: Greek and Roman Games in the Computer Age (2012) and Sappho at Rome: Receptions from Lucretius to Martial (with Stephen J. Harrison, forthcoming). She has published numerous articles on Greek and Roman poetry and prose, in Norwegian and in English, and she became the first person to have published translations of all of Ovid's love elegies into Norwegian verse (2001–9).

Table of Contents

Part I. History and Context: 1. Greek elegy Richard Hunter; 2. Latin precursors Federica Bessone; Part II. The Latin Love Elegists: 3. Caius Cornelius Gallus: 'the inventor of Latin love elegy' Emmanuelle Raymond; 4. Tibullus in first place (with Lygdamus) Parshia Lee-Stecum; 5. 'The woman' Mathilde Skoie; 6. Propertius Alison Keith; 7. Ovid the love elegist Thea S. Thorsen; Part III. The Elegiac World: 8. Time, place and political background Stephen J. Harrison; 9. The poeta-amator, nequitia and recusatio Alison Sharrock; 10. The puella: accept no substitutions! Paul Allen Miller; 11. Seruitium amoris: the interplay of dominance, gender and poetry Laurel Fulkerson; 12. Militia amoris: fighting in love's army Megan O. Drinkwater; Part IV. The Ends of Latin Love Elegy: 13. Loves and elegy Roy Gibson; 14. Latin love elegy and other genres Lisa Piazzi; 15. Breaking the rules: elegy, matrons and mime John F. Miller; Part V. Receptions: 16. Latin love elegy in late antiquity: Maximian Roger P. H. Green; 17. The love elegy in medieval Latin literature (pseudo-Ovidiana and Ovidian imitations) Marek Thue Kretschmer; 18. Renaissance Latin love elegy Luke B. T. Houghton; 19. English elegies of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Victoria Moul; 20. Translation and imitation of classical elegy in the French eighteenth century Stéphanie Loubère; 21. Russian elegists and Latin lovers in the long eighteenth century Andrew Kahn; 22. German elegies: from Baroque beginnings and classical culminations to twentieth-century Hollywood Theodore Ziolkowski; Part VI. Metre: 23. The Latin elegiac couplet Thea S. Thorsen.

Editorial Reviews

"This collection is a worthy addition to the ongoing research and discussion on Latin love elegy, a genre that by no means has exhausted literary analysis, and that still provides valuable insights to Augustan Rome."
Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"Devotees of the works of Propertius, Tibullus, Sulpicia, Ovid and the enigmatic Gallus will find much to celebrate in the two dozen contributions of this volume, which constitutes a true primer to a vast and challenging field of literary inquiry … All students of Latin poetry and its afterlife will want to consult this volume."
R. Alden Smith, The Classical Review

"[Thorsen]'s Companion is a gem in a celebrated series. All students of Latin poetry and its afterlife will want to consult this volume."
Lee Fratantuono, The Classical Review

From the Publisher