Catullus Poems, Books, Readers

In this book, a sequel to Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace (Cambridge, 2002), ten leading Latin scholars provide specially commissioned in-depth discussions of the poetry of Catullus, one of ancient Rome's most favourite and best loved poets. Some chapters focus on the collection as a whole and the interrelationship of various poems; others deal with intertextuality and translation, and Catullus' response to his Greek predecessors, both classical and Hellenistic. Two of the key subjects are the communication of desire and the presentation of the real world. Some chapters provide analyses of individual poems, while others discuss how Catullus' poetry was read by Virgil and Ovid. A wide variety of critical approaches is on offer, and in the Epilogue the editors provide a provocative survey of the issues raised by the volume.

Prologue; 1. Callimachus in Verona: Catullus and Alexandrian poetry Damien P. Nelis; 2. Representation and the materiality of the book in Catullus's polymetrics Denis Feeney; 3. Booking lovers: desire and design in Catullus G. O. Hutchinson; 4. Catullus and the Garland of Meleager Kathryn Gutzwiller; 5. Poem 45: the wooing of Acme and Septimius Francis Cairns; 6. A covering letter: poem 65 Tony Woodman; 7. Three problems in poem 66 Ian M. Le M. Du Quesnay; 8. Putting on the yoke of necessity: myth, intertextuality and moral agency in poem 68 Monica R. Gale; 9. Virgil's Catullan plots Philip Hardie; 10. Catullan contexts in Ovid's Metamorphoses K. Sara Myers; Epilogue.

Ian M. Le M. Du Quesnay taught Classics at the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge, and has published a number of classic papers on the Latin poetry of the first century BC from Catullus to Ovid.
Tony Woodman has taught at the Universities of Newcastle, Leeds and Durham, and is currently Gildersleeve Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. He has published monographs and commentaries on various Latin subjects and authors, together with award-winning translations of Sallust and Tacitus. The present volume is the latest in a series which he has been co-editing since 1974.