Oxford Readings in Propertius

This volume focuses on the great Roman love poet Propertius. Propertius' poetry reveals an ardent love affair between the poet and his girlfriend, whom he calls 'Cynthia', yet it also offers a snapshot of life in ancient Rome during the Augustan age (20s BC). While this was a period of growth and revival after the crippling civil wars of the previous century, it was also a time when Rome was adjusting to a new form of government under its first emperor. Oxford Readings in Propertius is the first volume on Propertius' poetry to bring together some of the best and most influential scholarship written during the last three decades and put them into dialogue with each other. The articles discuss the recent developments in Propertius scholarship, as well as major critical approaches that have emerged in classical studies in general, and look at issues of text, intertextuality, gender, and the social and political context of Propertius' work.PREFACE ; INTRODUCTION ; Whose Reading of What Propertiusa ; THE TEXT OF PROPERTIUS ; 2. Propertius, Between the Cult of the Transmitted Text and the Hunt for Corruption ; 3. Editing Propertius ; POETIC CONTEXTS ; 4. The Language of Propertius and the Stylistic Tendencies of Augustan Poetry ; 5. Propertius IV 9: Alexandrianism and Allusion ; 6. Propertius 1,4 and 1,5 and the Gallus of the Monobiblos ; 7. Prropertius and the Unity of the Book ; 8. Poetic Baldness and its Cure ; POETRY AND POLITICS ; 9. A Farewell to Promethean Man ; 10. Propertius 2.7. Militia amoris and the ironies of elegy ; 11. Images of the city: Propertius' new-old Rome ; GENDER ; 12. Mistress and metaphor in Augustan elegy ; 13. The Natural and Unnatural Silence of Women in the Elegies of Propertius ; 14. Gender and Genre in Propertius 2.8 and 2.9 ; 15. "Beyond good and Evil": Tarpeia & Philosophy in the Feminine (4.4) ; 16. Why Propertius is a Woman ; WORKS CITED ; BIBLIOGRAPHY