The Arts of Love
Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy

An examination of the love elegies of the Roman poets Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid.

Duncan F. Kennedy (Author)

9780521407670, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 December 1992

120 pages
20.5 x 12.9 x 1 cm, 0.255 kg

"What is most impressive throughout this book cannot be conveyed by any brief summary. In a practical sense, Kennedy reads elegy extremely well; his insights into particular passages and into the discourse of elegy as a whole are illuminating and important." Bryn Mawr Classical Review

This book examines 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. All Latin texts and terms are translated or closely paraphrased. Although the book concentrates on the work of the Roman elegists, the challenging insights it offers into the processes involved in the reading and appropriation of the texts of the past are relevant to scholars and students of classical literature in general, and its discussion of such key issues as history, textuality, representation, discourse, gender, ideology and metaphor will be of concern to those interested in literary theory and cultural studies.

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
Footnotes
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Poetry anthologies [various poets DCQ]