Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Catullus and his World: A Reappraisal by T. P. Wiseman  (2)
$36.99
|
The Erotics of Domination: Male Desire and the Mistress in Latin Love Poetry by Ellen Greene |
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
About the Author
The poetry of the Late Roman Republican poet Gaius Valerius Catullus, a rich document of the human heart, is the earliest-known reasonably complete body of erotic verse in the West.
Though approximately 116 poems survive, uncertainties about the condition of the fragmented manuscript and the narrative order of the poems make the Catullan text unusually problematic for the modern critic. Indeed, the poems can be arranged in a number of ways, making a multitude of different plots possible and frustrating the reader’s desire for narrative closure.
Micaela Janan contends that since unsatisfied desire structures both the experience of reading Catullus and its subject matter, critical interpretation of the text demands a "poetics of desire." Furthermore, postmodern critical theory, narratology, and psychoanalysis suggest a flexible concept of the "subject" as a site through which a multitude of social, cultural, and unconscious forces move. Human consciousness, Janan contends, is inherently incomplete and in a continuous process of transformation. She therefore proposes an original and provocative feminist reading of Catullus, a reading informed by theories of consciousness and desire as ancient as Plato and as contemporary as Freud and Lacan.
The Late Roman Republic in which Catullus lived, Janan reminds us, was a time of profound social upheaval when political and cultural institutions that had persisted for centuries were rapidly breaking down—a time not unlike our own. Catullus’ poetry provides an unusually honest look at his culture and its contradictory representations of class, gender, and power. By bringing to the study of this major work of classical literature the themes of consciousness and desire dealt with in postmodern scholarship, Janan’s book invites a new conversation among literary disciplines.
Though approximately 116 poems survive, uncertainties about the condition of the fragmented manuscript and the narrative order of the poems make the Catullan text unusually problematic for the modern critic. Indeed, the poems can be arranged in a number of ways, making a multitude of different plots possible and frustrating the reader’s desire for narrative closure.
Micaela Janan contends that since unsatisfied desire structures both the experience of reading Catullus and its subject matter, critical interpretation of the text demands a "poetics of desire." Furthermore, postmodern critical theory, narratology, and psychoanalysis suggest a flexible concept of the "subject" as a site through which a multitude of social, cultural, and unconscious forces move. Human consciousness, Janan contends, is inherently incomplete and in a continuous process of transformation. She therefore proposes an original and provocative feminist reading of Catullus, a reading informed by theories of consciousness and desire as ancient as Plato and as contemporary as Freud and Lacan.
The Late Roman Republic in which Catullus lived, Janan reminds us, was a time of profound social upheaval when political and cultural institutions that had persisted for centuries were rapidly breaking down—a time not unlike our own. Catullus’ poetry provides an unusually honest look at his culture and its contradictory representations of class, gender, and power. By bringing to the study of this major work of classical literature the themes of consciousness and desire dealt with in postmodern scholarship, Janan’s book invites a new conversation among literary disciplines.
About the Author
Micaela Janan is an assistant professor of classical studies at Duke University.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Citations
(learn more)
5
books
cite this book:
- Catullan Consciousness And The Early Modern Lyric In England: From Wyatt To Donne by Jacob Blevins on page 2, and Back Matter
- Latin Literature (Classical Foundations) by Susanna Braund on page 174
- Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position (Classics and Contemporary Thought, 1) by William Fitzgerald in Back Matter
- Sappho Is Burning by Page duBois on page 71
- Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean (Gender and History Special Issues) by Maria Wyke on page 135
Suggested Tags from Similar Products( What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
Help others find this product - tag it for Amazon search
No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?
|
 |
|||||||
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more