Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood [Hardcover]

A literary study using two comparative models to offer an alternative understanding of Catullus' poems.A literary study of the first-century BCE Roman poet, Catullus. This book uses two sets of comparative models to offer a new understanding of Catullus' poems as self-performance: first, cultural anthropological accounts of male social interaction in the premodern Mediterranean, and second, the postmodern poetics of such twentieth-century poets as Louis Zukofsky, which are characterized by simultaneous juxtaposition, a 'collage' aesthetic, and self-allusive play. The book will be of interest to students of comparative literature and gender studies as well as to classicists.A literary study of the first-century BCE Roman poet, Catullus. This book uses two sets of comparative models to offer a new understanding of Catullus' poems as self-performance: first, cultural anthropological accounts of male social interaction in the premodern Mediterranean, and second, the postmodern poetics of such twentieth-century poets as Louis Zukofsky, which are characterized by simultaneous juxtaposition, a 'collage' aesthetic, and self-allusive play. The book will be of interest to students of comparative literature and gender studies as well as to classicists.This literary study of the first-century BCE Roman poet, Catullus uses two sets of comparative models to offer a new understanding of his poems. The first consists of cultural anthropological accounts of male social interaction in the premodern Mediterranean, and the second, the postmodern poetics of such twentieth-century poets as Louis Zukofsky, which are characterized by simultaneous juxtaposition, a collage aesthetic, and self-allusive play. The book will be of interest to students of comparative literature and gender studies as well as to classicists.Preface; 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 aggressiolw