Wisconsin Studies in Classics

Benjamin Eldon Stevens

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780299296636
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Both passionate and artful, learned and bawdy, Catullus is one of the best-known and critically significant poets from classical antiquity. An intriguing aspect of his poetry that has been neglected by scholars is his interest in silence, from the pauses that shape everyday conversation to linguistic taboos and cultural suppressions and the absolute silence of death.             In Silence in Catullus, Benjamin Eldon Stevens offers fresh readings of this Roman poet's most important works, focusing on his purposeful evocations of silence. This deep and varied "poetics of silence" takes on many forms in Catullus's poetic corpus: underscoring the lyricism of his poetry; highlighting themes of desire, immortality-in-culture, and decay; accenting its structures and rhythms; and, Stevens suggests, even articulating underlying philosophies. Combining classical philological methods, contemporary approaches to silence in modern literature, and the most recent Catullan scholarship, this imaginative examination of Catullus offers a new interpretation of one of the ancient world's most influential and inimitable voices.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Toward a Poetics of Silence in Catullus
• 1. Natural and Sociocultural Silence in C. 6
• 2. Orality and Sexualized Silence in Cc. 5, 7, 74, 80, 88, 116, and 16
• 3. Poets, Poems, and Poetry: Cc. 22 and 36 (plus 50)
• 4. The Natural Silence of Death, Part 1: Cc. 65 and 68 (a)
• 5. The Natural Silence of Death, Part 2: Cc. 65 and 101 (with 96, 100, and 102)
• 6. “Feminized” Voices and Their Silences, Part 1: C. 64
• 7. “Feminized” Voices and Their Silences, Part 2: Cc. 63 and 51
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index