Title: The arts of love : five studies in the discourse of Roman love elegy /
Authors: Kennedy, Duncan F.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press,
Year: 1993
Subjects: Ovid,; Propertius, Sextus.; Elegiac poetry, Latin History and criticism.; Love poetry, Latin History and criticism.; Poetry as Topic history; Roman World; Rome In literature.
Abstract: The five chapters that make up this short book examine the love elegies of the Roman poets Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid from the point of view of the way the meanings attributed to the poems arise out of the interests and preoccupations of the cultural situation in which they are read. Each study is centred around a reading of a poem or poems together with a discussion of a variety of sophisticated theoretical approaches drawn from modern scholars and theorists such as Paul Veyne, Roland Barthes an Michel Foucault. In each case, the modes of analysis involved are pressed hard to see where they may lead, and, equally, where they may show signs of strain. All Latin texts and terms are translated or closely paraphrased.
Contents: 1. Representation and the rhetoric of reality -- 2. Getting down to essentials -- 3. Love's figures and tropes -- 4. A lover's discourse -- 5. An irregular in love's army: the problems of identification -- Index of passages discussed.