Redressing Elegy's Puella: Propertius IV and the Rhetoric of Fashion

1994 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 41-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeri Blair Debrohun
Keyword(s):  
Female Subject ◽  
First Person ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Love Elegy ◽  
Writing Practice ◽  
Fourth Book

Much recent criticism of Roman love elegy, especially Propertian love elegy, has been concerned with the exposure of elegy's ego and puella as poetic constructions whose ‘partially realistic’ characteristics and actions serve as metaphorical representations of the poet's writing practice and poetic ideals. As Duncan Kennedy has pointed out, however, this discourse of representation has already threatened to create its own limitations of applicability, as it privileges the ‘partial realism’ of love elegy's first-person narratives, in which an authorial male narrator (ego) writes of his female subject (puella), at the expense of the more openly unrealistic representational strategies of works such as Ovid's Heroides and Fasti or, the more immediate concern of this article, the fourth book of Propertius' elegies.

I Am Dressed, Therefore I Am?: Vertumnus in Propertius 4.2 and in Metamorphoses 14.622-771

Ramus ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara H. Lindheim
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Love Elegy ◽  
Female Voices ◽  
Programmatic Statement ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Gender Dissonance ◽  
Fourth Book

Recent interpretations of Propertius 4.2 see in Vertumnus' shifting costumes a programmatic statement about the new poetics of Propertius' fourth book of elegy. The statue's ability to assume and shed identities with a simple wardrobe change mirrors the poet's desire to challenge the traditional generic boundaries of love elegy, dressing it up now in Roman themes, now in amatory ones. No doubt this is so. And yet, more generally, recent criticism finds elegy as a genre hospitable to interpretations that focus on issues of gender and identity. Indeed, as Marilyn Skinner has succinctly summarised, ‘texts of the late first century BCE are notorious for the phenomenon of “gender dissonance”…boundaries between ‘male’ and ‘female’ as essential categories of psychosexual identity fluctuate wildly and eventually break down.’ Propertius' fourth and final poetic collection provides fertile territory for an interrogation of gender, since it both highlights female voices—for example Arethusa, Cynthia or Cornelia—and explores moments of transvestism—for example Vertumnus and Hercules. I argue that when Propertius cloaks the speaking statue, Vertumnus, alternately in ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ attributes, he lays bare not simply poetics, but, further, he questions the very constitution of gender. In other words, Propertius probes the relationship between self-representation and identity and reveals that both are fluid and, more surprisingly perhaps, that the former gives rise to the latter.

Lesbia, the poet, and the two faces of Sappho: ‘womanufacture’ in Catullus

2001 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 28-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niklas Holzberg
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Real Life ◽  
First Person ◽  
Love Elegy ◽  
Erotic Poetry ◽  
Personal Profile ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Central Characters

Our understanding of ancient erotic poetry has, in my opinion, been greatly furthered in recent years by the shift from an approach which sees the poetic world of Roman love elegy as the creation of mimesis to one which reads it as semiosis. The elegiac poet portrays neither experienced reality nor conditions at least conceivable as such, but constructs a fictional situation using certain literary motifs provided by generic tradition, and thus challenges the reader to a game of semiotics. The latter, conversant with the ‘sign language’ of the motifs – for example ofservitium amoris– will appreciate the poet's playful variations on a familiar theme and decipher the new meaning it has been given. Particularly significant here is, I find, the new perception of the two central characters in the elegiac world: the first-personpoetalamatorand hispuellaare both part of this fiction. The poet assumes the mask of an elegiac lover, playing the part as an actor would; he does not, then, re-enact his own experiences for an audience. In addition to this he designs the figureof the puella, who appears less as a character with its own personal profile and more as a typified representation, contrived in the main to reflect the poeticego'sthoughts. Women such as Cynthia, Delia, and Corinna are, to use Alison Sharrock's very apt definition, the product of ‘womanufacture’, and their names therefore cannot be read as pseudonyms for real-life women.

Narratives of Writing as Healing

2019 ◽  
pp. 108-123
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lynne Bird
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Inquiry ◽  
First Person ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Writing Practice

Writing as an art form helps people heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This chapter uses the theory of narrative inquiry to present a first-person case study of the author's writing life dovetailed with research illustrating how writing helps people heal. Writing methods will help educators, patients, people experiencing struggles, and anyone who wants to transfer thoughts to the page. Writing helps people cope with adversity, reframe situations to show a more optimistic attitude, and feel safe because the written page will not judge its author. Journal prompts serve as resources for the reader to begin or continue a writing practice.

The Poet and the Procuress: TheLenain Latin Love Elegy

1996 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Sara Myers
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Love Poetry ◽  
Complete Control ◽  
Love Elegy ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Deep Interest

This paper investigates the figure of thelenain the elegies of Tibullus (I.5; II.6), Propertius (IV.5), and Ovid (AmoresI.8). While each poet treats the character of thelenain importantly different ways, each has in common a deep interest in contrasting his own position as both lover and poet with the activities of thelena, a bawd or procuress. All three poets curse thelena, denouncing primarily her malevolent magical powers, hercarmina, which are directed against them and theircarmina. Thelenanot only preaches an erotic code which in its emphasis on remuneration and the denigration of poetry directly opposes that of the poet-lover, she also usurps his role as instructor and constructor of the elegiacpuella. It is the elegiac poet's prerogative to describe and construct the elegiac mistress. By usurping his role aspraeceptor, thelenathreatens the poet with both sexual and literary impotence. It is precisely because thelenachallenges the male poet-lover's control over these terms that she is such a potent enemy; the woman with a pen, as Pollack writes inThe Poetics of Sexual Myth, ‘threatens to undermine a system of signification that defines her both as vulnerable and as victim’. If the elegiac mistress can be said to play a more masterful role asdominain Roman love poetry than in conventional Roman ideology, it must nevertheless be qualified with the reminder that she only plays a role constructed for her by elegy's first-person narrator who demands complete control over the discourse of their relationship, of the rules of the amatory game.

Medea's Flight: The Fourth Book of the Argonautica

1987 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-139 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Main Charge ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
Fourth Book ◽  
As If

If Medea has attracted more readers to the Argonautica than any other character – thereby also determining which parts of the poem have become generally familiar – she has also provided critics of the poem with their major (sometimes their sole) topic for discussion. The main charge, particularly among critics writing in English, is that the various aspects of Medea – awakening love, deadly magic, fratricide – form neither a consistent nor a credible whole. One quotation, from an article which explicitly aims to summarise recent criticism, may stand as representative: ‘[Medea′s passion] produced an inconsistency [Apollonius] either ignored deliberately in the confidence of his Medea in love, or, just possibly, may not have noticed. The same emotionally immature and helpless Medea is the competent, unfrightened servant of Hecate, the cool instructress of Jason in taming the bulls, the calm soother of the dragon…the behaviour of Medea later in the [fourth] Book is, against all reason, quite untouched by what we would think of as a shattering experience, at the very least destructive of any real trust between her and Jason….It is as if Apollonius has thrown in [Apsyrtus′ murder] without care or realisation of its consequence for the consistency of her character’. Behind criticism of this kind lies both an understandable desire to relate the characters of ancient literature, if not to our own experience, at least to what instinct tells us is possible, and the whole tradition of criticism which descends from the Poetics of Aristotle. In recent years other approaches have gained currency, but in this paper I shall explore the presentation of Medea as a whole (Part I) and particularly of her flight from Colchis (Part II) within a traditional framework in an attempt to clarify what seem to me to be critical misunderstandings.

Written Women: Propertius' Scripta Puella

1987 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 47-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Wyke
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Female Subject ◽  
Psychological Characteristics ◽  
Literary Discourse ◽  
Love Elegy

The narrative organization of Propertius' first poetry-book seems to encourage a practice of reading the characters and events of his love elegy as real. The predominantly autobiographical mode allows the reader to equate the lover of the text with the author Propertius. Direct addresses to a beloved ‘Cynthia’ who is allocated physical and psychological characteristics suggest that the narrative's female subject has a life outside the text as Propertius' mistress. The illusion of a real world populated by real individuals is then sustained by various other formal mechanisms such as the regular deployment of addresses to the historically verifiable figure of Tullus or occasional references to the landscape of Baiae, Umbria and Rome. Having established a recognizable setting, the poetry-book seems even to account for its own existence as literary discourse with the claim that composition is a method of courtship. Writing is subsumed within and subordinated to an erotic scheme: Propertius writes to woo a woman.

First Person on the Last Page: Choosing How to Walk the Path

ASHA Leader ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-72
Author(s):  
Kelli Jeffries Owens
Keyword(s):  
First Person

What Does the Implicit Association Test Measure? A Test of the Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Prejudice-Related IATs

2002 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertram Gawronski
Keyword(s):  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Discriminant Validity ◽  
Association Test ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
East Asians ◽  
Student Sample ◽  
Convergent And Discriminant Validity ◽  
Explicit Prejudice ◽  
Turkish People

Abstract. Drawing on recent criticism of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the present study tested the convergent and discriminant validity of two prejudice-related IATs to corresponding explicit prejudice measures in a German student sample (N = 61). Confirming convergent validity, (a) an IAT designed to assess negative associations related to Turkish people was significantly related to the explicit endorsement of prejudiced beliefs about Turkish people, and (b) an IAT designed to assess negative associations related to East Asians was significantly related to explicit prejudice against East Asians. Moreover, confirming discriminant validity, (c) the Asian IAT was unrelated to the explicit endorsement of prejudiced beliefs about Turkish people, and (d) the Turkish IAT was unrelated to explicit prejudice against Asian people. These results further corroborate the assumption that the IAT is a valid method to assess the strength of evaluative associations in the domain of prejudice and stereotypes.

First-Person Experiments in Thinking

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renatus Ziegler ◽  
Ulrich Weger
Keyword(s):  
Physiological Parameters ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Mental Contents

Abstract. In psychology, thinking is typically studied in terms of a range of behavioral or physiological parameters, focusing, for instance, on the mental contents or the neuronal correlates of the thinking process proper. In the current article, by contrast, we seek to complement this approach with an exploration into the experiential or inner dimensions of thinking. These are subtle and elusive and hence easily escape a mode of inquiry that focuses on externally measurable outcomes. We illustrate how a sufficiently trained introspective approach can become a radar for facets of thinking that have found hardly any recognition in the literature so far. We consider this an important complement to third-person research because these introspective observations not only allow for new insights into the nature of thinking proper but also cast other psychological phenomena in a new light, for instance, attention and the self. We outline and discuss our findings and also present a roadmap for the reader interested in studying these phenomena in detail.

Effects of Light-Hearted and Serious Entertainment on Enjoyment of the First and Third Person

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hofer
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
First Person ◽  
Online Experiment ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Third Person Effect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Perceived Enjoyment ◽  
The Third Person

Abstract. This was a study on the perceived enjoyment of different movie genres. In an online experiment, 176 students were randomly divided into two groups (n = 88) and asked to estimate how much they, their closest friends, and young people in general enjoyed either serious or light-hearted movies. These self–other differences in perceived enjoyment of serious or light-hearted movies were also assessed as a function of differing individual motivations underlying entertainment media consumption. The results showed a clear third-person effect for light-hearted movies and a first-person effect for serious movies. The third-person effect for light-hearted movies was moderated by level of hedonic motivation, as participants with high hedonic motivations did not perceive their own and others’ enjoyment of light-hearted films differently. However, eudaimonic motivations did not moderate first-person perceptions in the case of serious films.

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