Ebook: Introspection and engagement in Propertius: a study of book 3

Propertius re-invents Latin love-elegy in his third collection. Nearly a decade into the Augustan principate, the early counter-cultural impulse of Propertius' first collections was losing its relevance. Challenged by the publication of Horace's Odes, and by the imminent arrival of Virgil's Aeneid, in 23 BCE Propertius produced a radical collection of elegy which critically interrogates elegy's own origins as a genre, and which directly faces off Horatian lyric and Virgilian epic, as part of an ambitious claim to Augustan pre-eminence. But this is no moment of cultural submission. In Book 3, elegy's key themes of love, fidelity, and political independence are rebuilt from the beginning as part of a subtle critique of emerging Augustan mores. This book presents a series of readings of fourteen individual elegies from Propertius Book 3, including nostalgic love poems, an elegiac hymn to Bacchus, and a lament for Marcellus, the recently-dead nephew of Augustus.;Turning elegy upside down: Propertius 3.1-3 -- Seeking fides in poets and poetry: Propertius 3.6 -- Thematic experimentation: Propertius 3.9-11 -- Marriage and the elegiac woman: Propertius 3.12 -- Delays and destinations: Propertius 3.16 -- A hymn to Bacchus: Propertius 3.17 -- In lament for Marcellus: Propertius 3.18 -- Renewing an elegiac contract: Propertius 3.20 -- Breaking up (with) Cynthia: Propertius 3.24 -- Epilogue the apotheosis of amor: Propertius 3.22.