Synopses & Reviews
This volume focuses on the great Roman love poet Propertius. Propertius' poetry reveals an ardent love affair between the poet and his girlfriend, whom he calls 'Cynthia', yet it also offers a snapshot of life in ancient Rome during the Augustan age (20s BC). While this was a period of growth and revival after the crippling civil wars of the previous century, it was also a time when Rome was adjusting to a new form of government under its first emperor.
Oxford Readings in Propertius is the first volume on Propertius' poetry to bring together some of the best and most influential scholarship written during the last three decades and put them into dialogue with each other. The articles discuss the recent developments in Propertius scholarship, as well as major critical approaches that have emerged in classical studies in general, and look at issues of text, intertextuality, gender, and the social and political context of Propertius' work.
About the Author
Ellen Greene is the Joseph Paxton Presidential Professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma. She has published numerous books and articles on Greek and Latin love poetry.
Tara Welch is an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Kansas. She has published a number of articles on Latin poetry and a book on Propertius.
Table of Contents
Preface Introduction
Whose Reading of What Propertiusa, Tara S. Welch
The Text of Propertius
2. Propertius, Between the Cult of the Transmitted Text and the Hunt for Corruption, Paolo Fedeli
3. Editing Propertius, James Butrica
Poetic Contexts
4. The Language of Propertius and the Stylistic Tendencies of Augustan Poetry, Herman Trankle
5. Propertius IV 9: Alexandrianism and Allusion, Paola Pinotti
6. Propertius 1,4 and 1,5 and the Gallus of the Monobiblos, Francis Cairns
7. Prropertius and the Unity of the Book, G. O. Hutchinson
8. Poetic Baldness and its Cure, James E.G. Zetzel
Poetry and Politics
9. A Farewell to Promethean Man, Hans Peter-Stahl
10. Propertius 2.7. Militia amoris and the ironies of elegy, Monica Gale
11. Images of the city: Propertius' new-old Rome, Elaine Fantham
Gender
12. Mistress and metaphor in Augustan elegy, Maria Wyke
13. The Natural and Unnatural Silence of Women in the Elegies of Propertius, Barbara K. Gold
14. Gender and Genre in Propertius 2.8 and 2.9, Ellen Greene
15. "Beyond good and Evil": Tarpeia and Philosophy in the Feminine (4.4), Micaela Janan
16. Why Propertius is a Woman, Paul Allen Miller
WORKS CITED
Bibliography