The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy

In this volume leading international scholars offer a comprehensive, critical and engaging presentation of the genre of Latin love elegy. Opening with an outline of Greek elegy and Latin precursors, the volume challenges the conception of Gallus as the 'inventor' of Latin love elegy, highlights how Sulpicia, the only woman whose poetry is extant, makes the genre unique in the history of Augustan literature in terms of gender, and provides fresh presentations of the canonical Latin elegists. Five chapters visit the world of Latin love elegy, the time, place and political background, the stock figures and the slavery of love and erotic campaigning. A whole section treats the limits of Latin love elegy, which seem to be inherent to the genre itself. Nevertheless, the volume closes with a series of investigations into the reception of Latin love elegy, which attests to its vital influence on the history of Western literature.

Author: Thea S. Thorsen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11/21/2013
Pages: 452
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780521129374

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2014 pg. 252

About the Author
Thorsen, Thea S.: - Thea S. Thorsen is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Classical Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She is the author of Ovid's Early Poetry: From His Single Heroides to his Remedia Amoris (forthcoming) and editor of two volumes based on conferences which she initiated and co-organized: Greek and Roman Games in the Computer Age (2012) and Sappho at Rome: Receptions from Lucretius to Martial (with Stephen J. Harrison, forthcoming). She has published numerous articles on Greek and Roman poetry and prose, in Norwegian and in English, and she became the first person to have published translations of all of Ovid's love elegies into Norwegian verse (2001-9).