The Erotics of Domination: Male Desire and the Mistress in Latin Love Poetry

by Ellen Greene

Overview

A groundbreaking examination of power relations in Roman elegy

In recent decades, scholars in the field of classics have paid increasing attention to gender and sexual politics in Latin elegiac poetry. In The Erotics of Domination, Ellen Greene re-examines long-held scholarly attitudes concerning the representation of male sexual desire and female subjection in the Latin love poetry of Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid. Analyzing first-person poetic personae that critics have often romanticized, Greene finds that whereas the Catullan lover appears to struggle against his own “feminization,” the Roman elegiac poets—particularly Propertius and Ovid—proclaim a radically unconventional philosophy in their seemingly deliberate inversion of conventional sex roles. Through the servitude of the male lover to his mistress, the woman achieves, at least nominally, complete domination and control over him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806140506
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	01/22/2010
Series:	Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture , #37
Pages:	162
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.37(d)

About the Author

Ellen Greene is Joseph Paxton Presidential Professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author or editor of four books, including The Erotics of Domination: Male Desire and the Mistress in Latin Love Poetry and The New Sappho on Old Age.

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Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	xi
Chapter 1.	The Catullan Ego: Fragmentation and the Erotic Self	1
Chapter 2.	Gendered Domains: Public and Private in Catullus	18
Chapter 3.	Elegiac Woman: Fantasy, Materia, and Male Desire in Propertius' Monobiblos	37
Chapter 4.	Ovid's Amores: Women, Violence, and Voyeurism	67
Chapter 5.	Sexual Politics in Ovid's Amores	93
	Notes	115
	Bibliography	129
	Index	137

What People are Saying About This

Tina Passman

Greene makes an important contribution to understanding the sexual politics of Latin love poetry and the manner in which the power dynamics of gender and desire are manifest in traditional Roman love poetry.

Editorial Reviews

Greene (classics, U. of Oklahoma) re-examines scholarly attitudes concerning the representation of male sexual desire and female subjection in the Latin love poetry of Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid. Examining previously romanticized first-person poetic personae, Greene argues that male sexuality is threatened as moral resolve and social status are undercut by desires that render men "womanish". Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

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