Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position

Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position
ISBN-10
0520924096
ISBN-13
9780520924093
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
319
Language
English
Published
1996-01-23
Publisher
Univ of California Press
Author
William Fitzgerald

Description

Restoring to Catullus a provocative power that familiarity has tended to dim, this book argues that Catullus challenges us to think about the nature of lyric in new ways. Fitzgerald shows how Catullus's poetry reflects the conditions of its own consumption as it explores the terms and possibilities of the poet's license. Reading the poetry in relation to the drama of position played out between poet, poem, and reader, the author produces a fresh interpretation of almost all of Catullus's oeuvre. Running through the book is an analysis of the ideological stakes behind the construction of the author Catullus in twentieth-century scholarship and of the agenda governing the interpreter's position in relation to Catullus.

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