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Taking the Woman's Part: Engendering Roman Love Elegy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Maria Wyke
Maria Wyke*
Affiliation:
University of Reading
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Extract

When a woman writes herself into the genre of Roman love elegy she appears to break the recognised conventions for its production, according to which woman is the passive object of erotic desire not its active subject, the written not the writer. In discussing the elegiac poetry composed by Sulpicia, one means by which critics have expressed her extraordinary achievement has been to engender Roman love elegy. For Nick Lowe, Sulpicia's unique intervention was to compose poetry on the subject of her own erotic experience in ‘an obstinately male genre’. For Amy Richlin, Sulpicia breached a double barrier, both the ‘male job’ of writing and the ‘male genre’ of elegy. With reference to Sulpicia, I also labelled Augustan elegy as ‘male-oriented verse’ that constructs a ‘male narrative perspective’. While it is evidently the case that, with the notable exception of Sulpicia, the biological sex of all the authors of Roman elegy is male, I would now argue that the genre of elegy itself is not unequivocally ‘masculine’ and that to engender elegy unproblematically as ‘male’ fails to do justice to the genre's crucial play with Roman categories of gender.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 23 , Issue 1-2 , 1994 , pp. 110 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1994

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References

1. Lowe, N. J., ‘Sulpicia’s Syntax’, CQ 38 (1988), 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richlin, A., ‘Sulpicia the Satirist’, CW 86 (1992), 138Google Scholar; Wyke, M., ‘Mistress and Metaphor in Augustan Elegy’, Helios 16 (1989), 43Google Scholar.

2. Gamel, M.-K., ‘Non sine caede: Abortion Politics and Poetics in Ovid’s Amores’, Helios 16 (1989), 183Google Scholar.

3. Gold, B.K., ‘“But Ariadne was never there in the first place”: Finding the Female in Roman Poetry’, in Rabinowitz, N.S. and Richlin, A. (eds.), Feminist Theory and the Classics (New York 1993), 75–101Google Scholar.

4. Hallett, Judith P., ‘The Role of Women in Roman Elegy: Counter-cultural Feminism’, in Peradotto, John and Sullivan, J.P. (eds.), Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (Albany 1984), 241–62Google Scholar. [First published in Arethusa 6 (1973), 103–24.Google Scholar]

5. I take as my heading here the title of an article by Alison Sharrock in JRS 81 (1991), 36–49Google Scholar.

6. Veyne, P., Roman Erotic Elegy: Love, Poetry, and the West, tr. Pellauer, D. (Chicago 1988), 136Google Scholar.

7. Kennedy, D.F., The Arts of Love: Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy (Cambridge 1993), 70Google Scholar.

8. Kennedy (n.7 above), 74.

9. The trope is discussed by both Veyne (n.6 above) and Kennedy (n.7 above), 46–63.

10. Wyke, M., ‘Written Women: Propertius’ Scripta Puella’, JRS 77 (1987), 47–61Google Scholar; ‘The Elegiac Woman at Rome’, PCPS 33 (1987), 153–78Google Scholar; Wyke (n.l above), 25–47. Cf. Gold, B.K., ‘“The master mistress of my passion”: The Lady as Patron in Ancient and Renaissance Literature, in DeForest, M. (ed.), Woman’s Power, Man’s Game: Essays on Classical Antiquity in Honor of Joy K. King (Wauconda 1993), 291–93Google Scholar, and Gold (n.3 above), 88f.

11. K. McNamee, ‘Propertius, Poetry, and Love’, in DeForest (n.10 above), 215.

12. Kennedy (n.7 above, 46–63) in particular cautions against the unidirectional reading of love and sex as a ‘metaphor’ for writing elegy.

13. Sharrock, A., ‘The Love of Creation’, Ramus 20 (1991), 181Google Scholar.

14. Sharrock (n.5 above). For the Ovidian technique of exposing the elegiac puella as a mode of male discourse see also my comments on Amores 3.1 in Wyke, M., ‘Reading Female Flesh: Amores 3.1’, in Cameron, Averil (ed.), History as Text (London 1989), 111–43Google Scholar.

15. Lyne, R.O.A.M., The Latin Love Poets from Catullus to Horace (Oxford 1980Google Scholar); Griffin, J., Latin Poets and Roman Life (London 1985Google Scholar).

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17. For Showalter’s terms ‘feminist critique’ and ‘gynocritics’, see Greene, G. and Kahn, C. (eds.), Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism (London 1985CrossRefGoogle Scholar), and Todd, Janet, Feminist Literary History (Oxford 1988Google Scholar). The applicability of Showalter’s terms to the development of feminist criticism of the elegiac corpus is discussed by Gold (n.3 above).

18. Gold (n.3 above), 76.

19. My observations on the Sulpician elegies are largely indebted to the following analyses: Hallett, J. P., ‘Women as Same and Other in Classical Roman Elite’, Helios 16 (1989), 59–78Google Scholar; Hinds, S., ‘The Poetess and the Reader: Further Steps towards Sulpicia’, Hermathena 143 (1987), 29–46Google Scholar; Lowe (n.l above); Santirocco, M.S., ‘Sulpicia Reconsidered’, CJ 74 (1979), 229–39Google Scholar.

20. See Roessel, D., ‘The Significance of the Name Cerinthus in the Poems of Sulpicia’, TAPA 120 (1990), 243ffGoogle Scholar.

21. Winkler, J.J., The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York 1990), 163Google Scholar. On Sulpicia cf. Hallett (n.19 above), 71; Lowe (n.l above), 204.

22. See especially Hallett (n.19 above), 70f.

23. Santirocco (n.19 above), 235, and Lowe (n.l above).

24. I take as my heading here the term which Barbara Gold borrows from Alice Jardine to identify the discursive strategies of the Propertian play with gender categories. See Gold (n.3 above).

25. Kennedy (n.7 above), 28.

26. Kennedy (n.7 above), 30f. Kennedy, it should be noted, describes the procedures of gender criticism in the context of remarking upon its apparently essentialising processes of thought, whereby the terms ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’ are employed as if they transcend history.

27. Hallett (n.4 above) and—more recently— ‘Martial’s Sulpicia and Propertius’ Cynthia’, in DeForest (n.10 above), 344f., and ‘Feminist Theory, Historical Periods, Literary Canons, and the Study of Greco-Roman Antiquity’, in Rabinowitz and Richlin (n.3 above), 62–66.

28. Gold (n.3 above).

29. Hallett (n.4 above), 249–52; Wyke (n.l above), 36; Hallett (n.19 above), 65, and ‘Con-textualising the Text: The Journey to Ovid’, Helios 17 (1990), 193Google Scholar; Gold (n.3 above), 91–93; Kennedy (n.7 above), 33f. For Roman moralising discourses on sexual relations, see especially Edwards, C., The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge 1993), 70 and 72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Kennedy (n.7 above), 31–33 and 58f.; Sharrock (n.13 above), 173.

31. Isid. Orig. 10.179, for which see Sharrock (n.13 above), 173.

32. See Wyke, ‘Written Women’ (n.10 above), 52f., for a discussion of the terms employed by Godo Lieberg to describe the Propertian puella’s relations to poetic production.

33. For the female anatomy of the elegiac genre, see also my comments (Wyke, n.14 above) on the figure of Elegia in Amores 3.1.

34. Hallett (n.4 above).

35. See Edwards (n.29 above), 12 and 46f.

36. See Wyke (n.l above), 37; Gold (n.10 above), 278f. and 286f.

37. Hallett (n.4 above), 246.

38. Wyke (n.l above), 42.

39. Kennedy (n.7 above), 37f.

40. Hallett, ‘Martial’s Sulpicia’ (n.27 above), 344f.

41. Wyke (n.l above), 34.

42. Wyke (n.l above), 42.

43. On the charge of ‘effeminacy’ see Edwards (n.29 above), 63–97.

44. Kennedy (n.7 above), 31.

45. Conte, G.B., Genres and Readers: Lucretius, Love Elegy, Pliny’s Encyclopedia, tr. Most, G.W. (Baltimore 1994), 36f.Google Scholar Cf. Kennedy, D.F., ‘“Augustan” and “Anti-Augustan”: Reflections on Terms of Reference’, in Powell, A. (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (Bristol 1992), 47Google Scholar.

46. Henderson, J., ‘Satire Writes “Woman”: Gendersong’, PCPS 35 (1989), 56Google Scholar.

47. Kennedy (n.7 above), 58–63; Oliensis, E., ‘Canidia, Canicula and the Decorum of Horace’s Epodes’, Arethusa 24 (1991), 125Google Scholar.

48. Gold (n.3 above).

49. Kennedy (n.7 above), 34–39.

50. Cf. Kennedy (n.45 above), 42–47, on Ovid’s Ars Amatoria.

51. I take my heading from the title of an article by Zeitlin, Froma I., ‘Playing the Other: Theater, Theatricality, and the Feminine in Greek Drama’, in Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton 1990), 63–96Google Scholar.

52. Hallett (n.4 above), 254.

53. See Conte (n.45 above), 46, who is commenting on the distinction between the techniques of Ovid’s Remedia Amoris and the Amores.

54. Wyke, ‘Elegiac Woman’ (n.10 above), 157.

55. Wyke, ‘Elegiac Woman’ (n.10 above), 155.

56. See Wyke, ‘Elegiac Woman’ (n.10 above), 156f.

57. For example, Jupiter is said to disguise himself (uortii) as Amphitryo, in the prologue to Plautus Am. 121.

58. Henderson (n.46 above), 60.

59. According to the elder Seneca, the institution of recitatio was first made fashionable at Rome by Asinius Pollio around 39 BCE. See Woodman, T. and Powell, J. (eds.), Author and Audience in Latin Literature (Cambridge 1992), 204–06CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. For elegy and recitatio see McKeown, J.C., Ovid: Amores. Volume 1: Text and Prolegomena (Liverpool 1987), 63–73Google Scholar.

61. Yardley, J.C., ‘Propertius 4.5, Ovid Amores 1.6 and Roman Comedy’, PCPS 33 (1987), 179–89Google Scholar; Yardley, , ‘The Symposium in Roman Elegy’, in Slater, William J. (ed.), Dining in a Classical Context (Ann Arbor 1991), 149–55Google Scholar; McKeown, J.C., ‘Augustan Elegy and Mime’, PCPS 205 (1979), 71–84Google Scholar; Griffin (n.15 above), 198–210. Cf. Hallett, ‘Feminist Theory’ (n.27 above), 65.

62. McKeown (n.61 above), 78; Yardley, ‘Propertius 4.5’ (n.61 above); Wyke, ‘Elegiac Woman’ (n.10 above), 165.

63. Zeitlin (n.51 above), 65.

64. Zeitlin (n.51 above), 68.

65. Zeitlin (n.51 above), 86f.

66. On these and the other female voices of the fourth book, see Wyke, ‘Elegiac Woman’ (n.10 above).

67. Desmond, M., ‘When Dido Reads Vergil: Gender and Intertexuality in Ovid’s Heroides’, Helios 20 (1993), 56–68Google Scholar.

68. I take my heading from the title of a book by de Lauretis, Teresa, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Indiana 1987CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

69. Kennedy (n.7 above), 2If.

70. De Lauretis (n.68 above), 1–30.

71. Gamel (n.2 above), 185f.; DeForest (n.10 above), vi-vii.

72. A much earlier version of this paper was read at the Institute of Classical Studies, London, and at the University of Manchester, in 1991.