|
| poems
as women |
Date:
Tue, 13 Jul 1993
From:
"Robert A. Kaster"
Subject:
Poems as women
Suetonius
*De grammaticis et rhetoribus* 18 quotes an epigram that casts a
poem--Cinna's *Zmyrna*--as a nubile woman who disappoints the
courtship of the ignorant and declares herself willing to "marry"
only her learned commentator, Crassicius Pansa: "uni Crassicio
se credere Zmyrna probavit: / desinite, indocti, coiniugio hanc
petere. / soli Crassicio se dixit nubere velle, / intima cui soli
nota sua extiterint." I'd swear that I've read other allegories
like this, which figure poems (or other literary works) as women,
especially with an erotic point (the *Zmyrna* itself of course had
an erotic theme), but I can't jar any recollections loose. (Peter
Wiseman had an excellent piece on Crassicius in *TAPA* 1985, but he
didn't take up this question; nor has any of the other secondary
lit.) I'll be very grateful (in print) for any help anyone out there
can give.
Date:
Tue, 13 Jul 1993
From:
Steve Lowenstam
Subject:
Re: Poems as women
The
most obvious is the epistle of Horace comparing his book of poetry
to a streetwalker. I'm sure others with a text at hand or in the
mind can provide the exact reference.
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993
From:
Bill Kupersmith
Subject:
Re: Poems as women
sed
dicam vobis, vos porro dicite multis milibus et facite haec carta
loquatur anus. (Catullus 68. 44-45)
Date:
Tue, 13 Jul 1993
From:
"James J. Clauss"
Subject:
Re: Poems as women
Although
the references are far from certain, the women mentioned by
Callimachus in the Prologue against the Telchines -- Demeter and the
great woman -- represent the poetry in which they were celebrated
(Aeita 1.10-13). I suspect you'll ultimately discover many other
examples of this sort of thing.
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1993
From: Dougal Blyth
Subject:
Re: Poems as women
compare
Aristophanes' Clouds 530-40 (parabasis): ka'gw, parQenos gar et' hn
k'ouk exhn pw moi tekein, exeQhka, pais d'hetera tis labous'
aneileto, humeis d' exeQrepsate gennaiws ka'paideusate, ek toutou
moi pista par' humwn gnwmhs esQ' horkia. nun oun Hlektran kat'
ekeinhn hd' h kwmwidia zhtous' hlQ', hn pou 'pitukhi Qeatais houtw
sofois. gnwsetai gar, hnper idhi, ta'delphou ton bostrukhon. hws de
swfrwn esti fusei skepsasQ', htis prwta men ouden hlQe rapsamenh
skutinon kaQeimenon eruQron ex akrou, pakhu, tous paidiois hin hi
gelws: oud' eskwpsen tous falakrous, oude kordakh' heilkusen:
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993
From:
Lowell Edmunds
Subject:
Re: Poems as women
In
response to BobKaster's query, I think that Antimachus' "Lyde,"
the poem, was somehow a replacement for, not just a lamentation for
his wife or whatever. West, vol. 2, p. 37, 1st ed.).
Date:
Tue, 13 Jul 1993
From:
"P. Lowell Bowditch"
Subject: Re: poems as women
The
reference for the epistle of Horace is 1.20. However, the poem as
book as streetwalker is not a woman but a freed slave
Date:
Wed, 14 Jul 1993
From:
"Richard F. Thomas"
Subject:
poems as women
it works in both directions, i think. what about martial 14.189:
Cynthia, facundi carmen iuvenale Properti, accepit famam, nec minus
ipsa dedit. the woman or the monobiblos? catullus' passer would pose
a similar question. i once had to teach a seminar on roman elegy,
and seem to remember that birt,antike buchwesen (?sp) dealt with
this.
Date:
Wed, 14 Jul 1993
From: "P. Lowell Bowditch"
Subject:
women as poems
A
classic, so to speak, Propertian example is the beginning of 2.1:
Quaeritis, unde mihi totiens scribantur amores, unde meus veniat
mollis in ora liber. non haec Calliope, non haec mihi cantat Apollo.
ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit. sive illam Cois fulgentem incedere
*vidi*, hac totum e Coa veste volumen erit; the metonymic slide from
woman to clothing as woman ( and thus poem) is striking here (as it
is in any glossy magazine...)
Date:
Wed, 14 Jul 1993
From:
Barbara Weiden Boyd
Subject:
poems as women
This
is an interesting thread. An important player in all of this is, of
course, Ovid. Amores 3.1 in particular embodies (pardon the pun) the
allegory, in the figures of Tragoedia and Elegia (itself modelled, I
believe, on Hercules in bivio). There is an article on this by M.
Wyke, "Reading Female Flesh: Amores 3.1," in the bizarre
(editorial comment) book History as Text: The Writing of Ancient
History, ed. Averil Cameron (London 1989). If one can get past the
trendy jargon (which, curiously,bugs my students more than it does
me), this is an OK article, if my memory of reading it last fall
serves me correctly.
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1993
From:
Jeffrey Wills
Subject:
Re: poems as women
My
colleague Denis Feeney points out a passage in Juv. 7.82ff. where
Statius goes around town pimping his uirgin poems. Perhaps also
relevant is the theme of seduction in poetics (e.g. G. Walsh's
*Varieties of Enchantment: Early Greek Views of the Nature and
Function of Poetry * (1984), 14-5, 22; W.G. Thalmann *Conventions of
Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry* (1984), 129-30;
Barthes' Le Plaisir du texte; R. Chambers, * Story and Situation:
Narrative Seduction and the Power of Fiction (1984), 10, 215-6, and
Peter Brooks *Reading for the Plot* (1984). I have cribbed these
references from a footnote of Denis in a forthcoming article on the
Fiction of Belief in Poetry.
Date:
Wed, 14 Jul 1993
From:
Mary Depew
Subject:
poems as women
As
Jim Clauss notes, there's the megalh gunh at Call. fr. 1.12
(Mimnermus' Nanno? Smyrneis? Antimachus' Lyde?); also the makrhn
[graun?] at line 10 (Philetas' Bittis? [no such title]). More play
on woman's/goddess' name = title of poem at AP ix.63.
Date:
Thu, 15 Jul 1993
From:
"Robert A. Kaster"
Subject:
Re: poems as women
Many thanks to everyone who's replied to my query in the past couple
of days. It was the passage from Juv. 7 (passed on from Denis Feeney
by Jeffrey Wills) that had originally been rattling around loose in
my memory: I'm glad now that I wasn't able to pin it down right off,
for I then probably wouldn't have posted the query, and would have
been the poorer.
Date:
Mon, 19 Jul 1993
From:
"James A. Arieti"
Subject:
Re: Poems as women
In Prose One of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, Lady
Philosophy, who is about to deliver a poem herself, expresses scorn
at the Muses of poetry who have just been falsely comforting
Boethius with a poem. She calls them "whores of the theatre."
It is interesting that Boethius portrays both these whorish muses
and Philosphia herself as women. |
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