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Epilogue

The Show Goes On: From Roman Comedy to Latin Love Elegy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2021

Christopher B. Polt
Affiliation:
Boston College, Massachusetts
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Summary

Scholars have long recognized that Latin love elegy’s essential erotic plot is based on the conflict between the adulescens amator and meretrix in Roman comedy, and particularly its focus on the competition between lover and beloved for sexual access, behavioral control, and the economic interests of both parties. This chapter argues that Catullus was an exemplary figure for the elegists who first showed how Roman comedy could enter sustained personal poetry, and it is argued that Catullus was, with respect to the erotic and economic conflict, a proto-elegist. This chapter explores how Catullus examines the stock scene of the excluded lover in one understudied cycle of his poems, where he limned the essential elements of Roman elegy’s appropriation of Roman comedy’s “greedy girl” motif, serving as a bridge between the two genres and a window through whom Ovid and other elegists viewed Plautus and Terence.

Type
Chapter
Information
Catullus and Roman Comedy
Theatricality and Personal Drama in the Late Republic
, pp. 174 - 188
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Epilogue
  • Christopher B. Polt, Boston College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Catullus and Roman Comedy
  • Online publication: 14 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885195.006
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  • Epilogue
  • Christopher B. Polt, Boston College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Catullus and Roman Comedy
  • Online publication: 14 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885195.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Epilogue
  • Christopher B. Polt, Boston College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Catullus and Roman Comedy
  • Online publication: 14 January 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108885195.006
Available formats
×