https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/434 Entrées d’index fr 0 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/486 Identifying an allusion to classical Greco-Roman poetry in a monologue (or prosopopoeia) of a cowherd by the fourth century Latin poet, Paulinus of Nola (c. 18.276-80), this article explains the emergence of the category of labor as a response to a process of Christian radicalization from the representation of erotic paroxysm in Sappho (fr. 31: “I see nothing in my eyes”), through the classical Latin poets Catullus (c. 51) and Horace (c. 1.13, 22). In view of Paulinus’ renunciation of wealth and repurposing of elite culture for the poor, his reception of Sappho suggests that ancient men of property could recognize the perspectives of their subordinates and resist their own political interests through poetic production, and specifically metapoetics, as a result of the ambiguity of embodiment and sensation posited in the modern philosophy of phenomenology and commonalities of gender and class explicated in post/modern social theory. Attributing the combination of these factors to a “deviation” in “focalization” (D. Fowler) and a “doubling” of “consciousness” (J. Winkler) in the producer of the poem (Paulinus), the article uses the Marxist-feminist concept of standpoint to develop a phenomenological approach to literary history, which promises to recover, not the experience of the poor and marginal (or “subaltern”) in ancient literature, but the form of their experience, as an “imputation of consciousness” (G. Lukács), which may well be a distinctive mark of literature. mar., 14 juin 2022 08:52:49 +0200 jeu., 07 déc. 2023 16:29:05 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/486 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/448 Recent innovative readings have shown that Horace’s Epodes is an experimental contribution to the iambic tradition using impotence as a structuring trope. In the light of those analyses, one corollary problem demanding re-examination is the Augustan poet’s relationship to his “suppressed precursor” Catullus, who in the Epodes as in the Odes goes unacknowledged although his presence is constantly felt. When composing iambics Horace apparently employs Catullus’ unorthodox generic practices as foils. Contextually distorted echoes may therefore call attention to neoteric conventions from which Horace dissociates himself. This paper tests that premise by attempting to clarify one hitherto unexplained detail of Epode 12: its mention of a go-between named “Lesbia”, who in the reported words of the speaker’s mistress is blamed for making the match. It argues that the epode mocks Cornelius Gallus’ and perhaps Propertius’ elegiac constructs of masculinity by tracing them back, through a network of allusions, to their Catullan origins and so exposing the absurdity at their core. mar., 14 juin 2022 08:50:59 +0200 jeu., 16 mars 2023 10:23:08 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/448 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/433 Glubit is one of the more infamous words in the Catullan corpus and for good reason. The verb represents a rare (at least in extant literature) piece of Roman sexual slang and it delivers the punch line for an insult poem belonging to the Lesbia cycle. Scholarship on glubere in Catullus has tended to focus on its vulgarity and which (if any) specific sex act the word denotes. Here, I revisit the word to interpret the implications of its agricultural origins. My own concern is not over which particular sex act the verb signifies but rather for the polysemic meanings imported by the slang metaphor’s literal definition. I do not aim to challenge or supplant the efforts of others to define glubere but instead to suggest an additional layer of meaning to its usage. I offer that the verb glubit introduces the specter of violence into the poem and serves to intensify and invert dynamics of power, portraying Lesbia as an overly active, dominant, and dangerous sexual being while compromising the masculinity of the Roman men she services. mar., 14 juin 2022 08:49:56 +0200 jeu., 16 mars 2023 10:21:32 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/433