Studies how Propertius transformed the elegiac form, using Callimachean style as a starting point

Professor Sullivan proposes what was, at the time of publication, a new view on Propertius' poetic development and his place in the social political and literary circles of the day. His was an important re-evaluation. It finally banished the picture of Propertius as a simple romantic, apprehended dimly through poor texts and an obscure vocabulary.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Explores how Propertius' third book re-invents Latin love-elegy for the reality of Rome's new imperial age.

The Roman elegiac poet Propertius was one such author. This final published collection, issued in 16 BCE, has been traditionally read as an abandonment by Propertius of his earlier flippant love poems for a more mature engagement with Roman public life or else a comical send-up of imperial policies as embodied in Rome's public buildings. The Elegiac Cityscape explores Propertius' Rome and the various ways his poetry about the city illuminates the dynamic relationship between one individual and his environment. The relationship between poet and city is complicated at every turn by the presence in the background of the emperor Augustus, whose sustained artistic patronage of Roman monuments brought about the most pervasive transformation that the city had yet seen. Combining the approaches of archaeology and literary criticism, Tara S. Welch examines how Propertius' poems on Roman places scrutinize the monumentalization of various ideological positions in Rome, as they poke and prod Rome's monuments to see what further meanings they might admit. The result is a poetic book rife with different perspectives on the eternal city, perspectives that often call into question any sleepy or complacent adherence to Rome's traditional values. Book jacket.

Up-to-date commentary, with introduction and new text, on this important work of Latin poetry.

The bond between love and death has long been recognised as a defining characteristic of the elegies of Propertius, but scholars have rarely clarified how or to what degree Propertius differed from other love poets in associating these themes. In this book, Dr Papanghelis traces the radical way in which Propertius dealt with amorous and morbid fantasies in his poems. He argues that the modes of erotic expression used in the elegies are fundamentally unconventional, to the point that the definitions of love and death are interdependent. This book offers a detailed reading of some of the most stimulating and problematic of Propertius' elegies, offering fresh insight on the question of the poet's sensuous temperament and the significance of the love-death relationship in his works.

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.