This thesis examines the hair imagery that runs through the works of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid. Comparative analysis of the elegists’ approaches to the motif, with particular emphasis on determining where and how each deviates from the cultural assumptions and literary tradition attached to hair imagery, sheds light on the character and purposes of elegy as a genre, as well as on the individual aims and innovations of each poet. The Introduction provides some background on sociological approaches to the study of hair, and considers the reasons why hair imagery should have such a prominent presence in elegy. Chapter 1 focuses on the elegists’ engagement with the idea of cultus (‘cultivation’), and their manipulation of the connotations traditionally attached to elaborate hairstyles, of sophistication on the one hand, and immorality on the other, to suit an elegiac context. Chapter 2 looks at how the complexities of the power relationship between the lover and his mistress play out in references to violent hair-pulling. Chapter 3 focuses on the sometimes positively and sometimes negatively spun image of grey-haired lovers, as a reflection of the lover-poet’s own contradictory wishes for his relationship with his mistress; it also considers grey hair as a symbol of physical mortality, as contrasted with poetic immortality. Chapter 4 examines the use of images of loose hair (especially images of dishevelled mourning) to suggest connotations ranging from the erotic to the pathetic, and focuses on the effects the elegists achieve by using a single image to communicate multiple implications. The Conclusion considers the ‘afterlife’ of elegiac hair imagery: the influence that their approaches had on the handling of similar images in later works.

The symbolism and rhetoric of hair in Latin elegy

n Roman love elegy, as in other narrative modes, fictions of dreaming hold a privileged place, for they herald moments in the elegiac narrative when it reflects upon its own methods and premises as erotic fiction. Propertius’ Book 2, for example, contains two poems that incorporate the motif of dreaming. In Elegy 2.29b, the poet-lover gazes at his sleeping mistress and makes mention of her dreams, while in 2.26a, the text that I will be examining here, the narrator himself is the dreamer.1 As do other literary dreams, that of Poem 2.26a demands a response; it announces itself as significant. Indeed the dream opens at a moment of crisis, as Cynthia flounders in the waves after being shipwrecked and the poet-lover imagines ways in which she might be either saved, or commemorated if attempts at rescue fail.2 Cynthia’s death or loss would, of course, mark the end of the lovers’ shared experience together, yet it would provide a vantage point from which the narrator could contemplate their story retrospectively and pronounce upon its meaning.3 Her rescue, on the other hand, would permit the love story to

Rescuing Cynthia: Dream and Commemoration in Propertius 2.26

Contesting Masculinity: Locating the Male Body in Roman Elegy.

/pdf/the-truth-about-latin-love-poetry-1sdmond394.pdf

The 'Truth' about Latin love poetry

Abstract This chapter considers the opening run of poems (3.1–5) as a cohesive programmatic group that establishes Propertius’ continued treatment of his amatory discourse through close intratextual engagement with his own earlier elegies. The elegist’s positioning of his verse in relation to the poems of Callimachus and Philitas is also explored, as well as his poetry’s engagement with the contemporary works of Horace (Odes) and Vergil (Georgics, Aeneid). A close reading of 2.34 is followed by a detailed discussion of the Hellenistic background to 3.1 and 3.3 that also considers the rôle of these poems in defining Propertius’ oeuvre against those of his contemporaries. The treatment of 3.2 continues the discussion of Propertius’ interaction with Horace’s lyric poetry and the elegist’s interest in his place in posterity. Discussion of 3.4, 3.5, and 3.7 explore Propertius’ poetological use of the militia amoris and his treatment of the Gallus fragment. 

The poeta–amator persists

Propertius ludibundus : Elemente des Humors in seinen Elegien

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Propertius ludibundus : Elemente des Humors in seinen Elegien