Catullan questions revisited

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Catullan questions revisited

T.P. Wiseman

Cambridge University Press, 2023

  • : hardback

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-169) and indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Catullan Questions Revisited offers a new insight into the brilliant poet who loved an aristocratic girl, attacked Julius Caesar and became a satirical playwright. Insisting on scrupulous use of the primary sources, Peter Wiseman combines textual, historical and even archaeological evidence to explode the orthodox view of Catullus' life and work. 'Lesbia' was not a woman in her thirties, as has been believed for 150 years, but a girl only recently married; Catullus' poems were written for performance, private or public, and it was only in 54 BC, at what he saw as the turning-point of his life, that he collected their texts into a sequence of probably seven volumes. His subsequent literary career, equally successful but much less well attested, was as a 'mime'-dramatist. This book is intended for everyone who is interested in poetry and history, and who does not believe that literary texts exist in a vacuum.

Table of Contents

  • Part I: 1. Who was Lesbia?
  • 2. How many books?
  • 3. Where was the audience?
  • 4. What were the long poems?
  • Part II: 5. How Gallic were the Transpadanes?
  • 6. Why is Ariadne naked?
  • 7. Clodia: some imaginary lives.

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